Developing Louisiana's Senate Never Voted on Whether a Betting App Is a "Product." Three New Orleans Bettors Are Asking a Judge to Decide It

Editor's note: TrueEdge builds odds tools and earns affiliate commissions from licensed sportsbooks, including the two defendants in this case. Weigh the conflict.

Three New Orleans bettors filed a class action on Thursday afternoon, October 22, in the Civil District Court for the Parish of Orleans. It names FanDuel, DraftKings and the two Louisiana casinos whose licences the apps operate under, Amelia Belle Casino and Bally's Baton Rouge. The 27-page complaint, captioned Payton et al. v. DK Crown Holdings Inc., says the apps are "intentionally designed and marketed to induce and exploit addictive behavior," according to KLFY. WBRZ reported the core theory: the apps are "products" under the Louisiana Products Liability Act, and they are defectively designed.

That theory has a problem, and it is in the statute itself. Louisiana's legislature looked at this exact question last year and did not finish answering it. The headline claim, then, is the weak part of the suit. The older, plainer claim underneath it is the one the operators should worry about.

The plaintiffs and what they want

The three named plaintiffs are all Orleans Parish residents. Adrian Payton, 43, has wagered $88,716.27, according to WBRZ, and says FanDuel's bonuses and deposit matches drew him in and that live odds often moved after he submitted a bet. Toi Smith, 29, began at 21 after seeing ads on Instagram and X. She says she now spends at least four hours a day in the apps and has wagered more than $23,500. Yolanda Perkins, a heavy parlay bettor, has wagered about $32,000 on FanDuel and $37,000 on DraftKings. Those figures are amounts wagered, not losses, and the complaint as reported does not give net losses.

The features the complaint attacks are specific: "slot-machine-style" micro-wagering, bonus bets timed to periods of financial distress, and limit-override screens with no cooling-off period. It also alleges that an internet gaming company owned by FanDuel's parent collects at least 186 data attributes per bettor, including propensity to gamble and susceptibility to marketing. All of this is allegation. Nothing has been tested in court, and none of the four defendants had commented in the reports we read.

The relief is where the case shows its hand. Beyond compensatory damages for mental anguish and treatment costs, the plaintiffs seek redhibition damages: a full refund of net deposits, return of commissions and fees, and attorney's fees. Their lawyer is Jennifer Hoekstra of Aylstock, Witkin, Kreis & Overholtz, who has filed more than a dozen similar suits elsewhere this year. "Louisiana law protects consumers from dangerously designed products," she said, "and we are asking a Louisiana court to apply it here."

The word the case turns on

Louisiana's Products Liability Act defines its subject narrowly. Under R.S. 9:2800.53, a "product" is "a corporeal movable that is manufactured for placement into trade or commerce." A corporeal movable, in Louisiana's civil-law vocabulary, is a physical thing that can be moved. A sportsbook app is a service delivered from a server. Whether that counts is the first question any judge has to answer, and the plaintiffs need a yes.

The legislature has already been asked this. In the 2025 session, Rep. Laurie Schlegel's HB 102, titled "Expands La. Products Liability Act to include digital products," passed the House 99-0 on May 6, 2025. It went to the Senate's Judiciary A committee on May 8, was considered on May 28, and was never reported out. The legislature's site still lists it as "Pending Senate Judiciary A." A bill to put apps inside the Act could not get through one Senate committee. The plaintiffs are now asking a district judge to hold that apps were inside it all along.

That is a hard request. When lawmakers propose adding something to a statute, a court will usually read that as a sign the statute did not already include it. It is not a rule, but defence lawyers will lead with it.

The best case that an app is already a product

The plaintiffs do have an answer, and it comes from Louisiana's own tax law. The state Department of Revenue's rule on tangible personal property, LAC 61:I.4301, says the Louisiana Supreme Court has treated tangible personal property as the same thing as a corporeal movable, and it lists "canned" computer software as tangible personal property. If software is corporeal for the sales tax, the argument goes, it is corporeal for the products statute too. Courts elsewhere have also moved. Bloomberg Law reported in April that a federal judge in Illinois held DraftKings' interface could be treated as a product under that state's law. The California social-media addiction verdict against Meta and YouTube this year gave the whole theory momentum.

This is the strongest version of the other side, and it is not frivolous. We still do not think it carries the day in Louisiana. A tax rule about software sold on a shelf is a long way from a live odds feed that changes with every pitch. The Illinois ruling came in a consumer-deception case. The nearest federal ruling on addiction itself went the other way: a judge in Pennsylvania dismissed a proposed class action, finding that online sportsbooks owe no duty of care to players at risk of addiction. And the 2025 vote is the most recent and most local evidence of what Louisiana's lawmakers think the Act covers.

Why the refund claim is the dangerous one

Redhibition does not need the word "product." It is the Civil Code's warranty in every sale. Under article 2520, "the seller warrants the buyer against redhibitory defects, or vices, in the thing sold." A defect that makes the thing useless, or so inconvenient that a buyer would not have bought it, entitles the buyer to rescind the sale. The Products Liability Act itself steps aside for it: R.S. 9:2800.53 says economic loss is recoverable under the Act only where redhibition "does not allow recovery," and that attorney's fees "are not recoverable under this Chapter." That is why the fee demand sits in the redhibition count.

Whether a deposit into a betting wallet is a "sale" is its own open question. But this claim is the one that scales. The proposed class is every Louisiana resident who "created an account, deposited funds, and utilized" the apps. WBRZ, citing the complaint, puts the state's 2025 handle above $4.24 billion, more than 90 percent of it by phone, and KLFY reports the complaint's figures of 44 percent for FanDuel and 31 percent for DraftKings in 2023. A ruling that net deposits are refundable to a certified class would be priced in hundreds of millions of dollars, not in three people's losses. That exposure is what makes this case different from a product-design argument.

The casinos are in the caption for a reason

Amelia Belle and Bally's Baton Rouge did not build an app. They are named because Louisiana's mobile licences run through land-based "anchor" casinos, which keeps the case anchored in a Louisiana court with Louisiana defendants. It also points straight at the regulator. On October 15, the Louisiana Gaming Control Board gave DraftKings only a conditional extension, through February 19, 2027, while it asks questions about AI-driven marketing, as we reported that week. The full renewal hearing is February 18. Discovery in a state-court class action and a licence review on the same subject in the same state is the combination operators least want.

What would change our view

If the Orleans Parish court holds, on the defendants' first exception, that an app is a corporeal movable, our reading of the products claim is wrong, and we would expect more Louisiana suits on the same template within weeks. If the court instead sends the dispute to the Gaming Control Board, or to arbitration under the apps' terms, the case shrinks to whatever the regulator decides to do in February. The Sports Betting Alliance's Joe Maloney told Bloomberg Law that "everyone universally acknowledges that this is an activity that is difficult for some people." The question for Louisiana is whether that difficulty is a design defect the seller warrants against. The legislature did not answer that last year, so a New Orleans judge will have to.

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