For the answer to this question, we turned, once again, to our pseudonymous casino-manager informant, Arnie Rothstein. Keep in mind that this is a response from the casino side of the equation; if anyone has a different opinion, please let us know and we'll include it an an update to the main answer.
Here's Arnie.
To respond to the first question, I would say no. I don't believe that players suing casinos for "patron abuse" will become more common. I've worked at small casinos and large casinos, and though I can't speak for the whole industry, I do believe that the casinos, especially the large publicly traded corporations, have weighed such issues and addressed them on a large scale.
First, the casinos receive very bad publicity over such strong-arm tactics. In today’s economy, with casino competition what it is, they can’t afford to take such actions against their customers, which usually go something like this:
Several beefy security guards accost a customer suspected of using his brain at a gaming table, then humiliate him further by escorting him to a scary holding room, where he's treated like a common criminal, held against his will, and searched. Meanwhile, often his room, if he has one at the casino (often in itself proof that he's doing nothing "wrong"), is being ransacked by more security guards who feel they’re solving the D.B. Cooper case.
Big casinos have rarely fared well in the court cases that result. When jurors hear stories and see videotape (surveillance cameras operate in the back rooms, too) of this treatment, they tend to find it hard to be too sympathetic to the casino. Also in the courtroom, they see a normal-looking casino customer on one side of the bench, facing a half-dozen casino lawyers in expensive suits, $350 shoes, and $100 haircuts on the other. The fact is, the best a casino can hope to win in such a lawsuit is a black eye on its market brand.
Secondly, local authorities (even in Tunica, where a three-quarter-of-a-mil jury award doesn't go unnoticed) are starting to shy away from always taking the side of the big casinos: Their liability is also on the line. In the case mentioned in the question, the player sued the Tunica County sheriffs, and the jury's award included $25,000 from the deputy personally for his violation of the player's Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment rights to be free of unreasonable searches and seizures.
I’m pretty sure that the local authorities will start telling the casinos to solve their own "civil" problems and if the casino insists that the authorities get involved, they'll play the part of a referee and not a judge.
Bottom line: Both the casino and the city/county are at risk for paying out large jury awards because of untrained surveillance agents, security guards, and law enforcement personnel and they know it.
So, what are they doing about it? Training of personnel, for one. For another, relying on computer-controlled electronic devices to take some of the guesswork out of identifying card counters and advantage players. For example, they might use a card-counting-detection application to assess a player's strategy, or biometrical facial recognition software to try and ID a known big winner. Some casinos are starting to experiment with radio frequency-type gaming chips to track what a player is winning and where the chips are going. They might also reduce the casino's "reinvestement" in a suspect player, i.e., reducing or eliminating his comps to reduce their loss exposure. And of course, they often take card-counter countermeasures: cutting off numerous cards, shuffling up early in a deck or shoe, changing dealers during a good swing, etc.
My opinion is that there's too much competition out there and too many lawyers happy to take on the casinos and cities/counties for this to go on much longer. It's true that some casinos, mainly the smaller ones, still try intimidation tactics, but the big boys know better by now.
