After that ruling, the firms Betano, Betsson, Coolbet and Latamwin - advised by lawyer Carlos Baeza - decided to add the Gómez, Pallavicini & García Abogados firm to their ranks, in addition to the civil law expert Carlos Pizarro, who carried out a detailed review about the legality of online betting houses from that perspective.

The legal army is completed on the criminal side by lawyers Jorge Bofill and Matías Balmaceda.

The companies hired the boutique firm - formed in 2017 by Gastón Gómez Bernales, José Francisco García and Julio Pallavicin - dedicated to matters of public law, economic regulation and complex litigation. The idea is to reinforce the strategies of gaming platforms considering that the regulations that aim to regularize that industry are still being discussed in Congress.

The arguments

For the first time since the battle to control this activity began, the platforms decided to carry out a civil analysis on the legality of their operations. And the Supreme Court ruling indicates that, from this body of law, online betting houses would be 'illegal'.

Days after the ruling, these companies contacted the civil law professor at the U. Diego Portales, Carlos Pizarro, to review the adjustment of the ruling with the Civil Code and verify the thesis proposed by the Third Chamber. This professional was chosen because he has several studies in various subjects such as: analysis of disputes between WOM against Entel; the crash of the Casa C-212 plane of the FACh in Juan Fernández in 2011, in addition to reports for ENAP on dangerous waste, are other cases.

Regarding the controversy surrounding online betting houses, Pizarro concludes in a 21-page report that 'the gambling contract is not prohibited in the Civil Code. Only the debt that emanates from it is a supposed illicit object, the nullity of which requires an enforceable judicial ruling. In such a way that as long as the nullity is not declared, the gambling contract produces effects.

In that sense, the lawyer maintained that the ruling is 'equivocal' because it extrapolates the assumption of 'illicit object' of the debt of a bet to the prohibition of the contract. When consulted, Pizarro explained that from the point of view of the Civil Code 'it is quite clear that there is no prohibition of gambling', adding that relying on that legal body 'to determine that there is a prohibition seems to me to be a very weak and decontextualized argument; especially because the rules have to be applied in a social context, which indicates that, indeed, society tolerates gambling and betting.

In detail, Pizarro maintained that 'limiting ourselves to the view of civil law, article 1466, which regulates gambling, is not an argument to understand that there is a prohibition on contracts. Furthermore, it was not a game of chance, but rather the exercise of betting. It seems to me that the Supreme Court's ruling is wrong in using civil law as a basis to conclude that online betting is prohibited.'

'The ruling is erroneous in that it uses civil law as a basis to conclude that online betting is prohibited.'
CARLOS PIZARRO, GAMING PLATFORMS LAWYER.
Source: Diario Financiero