Touch-screen games taken off ferries

State agency says they violate ban

The manufacturer of a popular children's touch-screen game describes its product as "sleek, playful and alluring."

The games are particularly alluring for agents with the state Division of Alcohol Law Enforcement, who are earnestly trying to enforce a ban on video poker and similar gaming devices that went into effect July 1. Last month, ALE Director Mike Robertson ordered the N.C. Ferry Division to remove more than a dozen of the touch-screen games from passenger lounges of eight state-owned ferries, charging that they violate the ban.

Now the owners of the games have sued, saying that the games are designed for amusement only and that the state's crackdown has prompted other businesses to pull the coin-operated machines. Later this month, a Johnston County judge is expected to decide who is right.

The gaming devices were removed from the eight ferries on Sept. 17, the same day Robertson called a ferry supervisor and told him he thought the machines were illegal. State ferry officials immediately complied, even though they consider the machines harmless children's games.

"It's Megatouch," said Lucy Wallace, communications coordinator with the N.C. Ferry Division. "You touch the screen with your hand to play word search games, puzzles, photo hunt and trivia."

The ferry system put 16 of the game machines on select ferries about five years ago to entertain children on some of its longer routes on Currituck and Pamlico sounds and the Cape Fear River.

"It was intended to give the children something to do other than feed the sea gulls or watch the scenery," Wallace said.

Robertson has not seen the Megatouch games removed from the ferries, but he is convinced they are illegal.

"Tell 'em to put them back on the boats, and I'll take them out," he said when he heard the ferry officials' take on the machines. "Tell them law enforcement says they are illegal, and I will be more than happy to exercise my official duties."

Robertson called the ferry division after receiving two complaints, the first from someone who thought there was a video poker machine on a ferry in Dare County. The second complaint was from an ALE agent who thought he saw video poker aboard a Fort Fisher vessel.

"The agent saw video card games on them," Robertson said.

Megatouch is manufactured by Merit Industries in Bensalem, Pa. Joe Canepi, who works in the company's customer support and parts department, said some versions of the machines feature Texas Hold 'em and five-card draw poker games.

The games removed from the ferries were returned to their distributor, D&M Entertainment in Lexington. D&M owner David Wyatt could not be reached Wednesday to say whether the machines on the ferries had poker games on them. The lawsuit says the games involve "skill and dexterity" and do not produce a receipt, token or other record that could be exchanged for a prize.

ALE says the machines aboard the ferries were among thousands of video "games of chance," including poker, bingo, craps and lotto, that were supposed to go dark July 1 after state lawmakers banned the devices last year.

Four days after the machines were removed from the ferries, several owners of the machines hired the law office of Rep. Leo Daughtry of Smithfield, a longtime attorney for the amusements industry, to file a lawsuit against Robertson, crime secretary Bryan Beatty and Gov. Mike Easley.

The lawsuit claims that "a genuine controversy exists" with respect to the owners' right to market its countertop games. The suit, filed in Johnston County, also claims the owners' lost revenues and severed relationships with retailers will lead to "substantial and incalculable losses."

Johnston County lawyer Lew Starling, who filed the lawsuit with Daughtry's daughter, Kelly K. Starling, said Wednesday that any time law enforcement officials tell business owners they will be cited for illegal devices, then the distributors of the machines have a right to try to prove they are legal.

"The only way we have to strongly disagree is to go to the courts and ask them to establish what the law is," Starling said.