Lawsuit says security firm botched call from Brunsons

When a legendary Las Vegas poker player and his wife were followed into their home May 2 by masked bandits, robbed and threatened at gunpoint, they thought their alarm company would send the police to save them.

After all, Doyle and Louise Brunson had activated the alarm so when Alarmco Inc. called to check if everything was OK, the woman gave a false security code under the assumption that it would alert the security agent to the problem.

It didn't, according to a lawsuit the couple has filed through attorney Eckley M. Keach against Alarmco Inc.

Instead, the lawsuit stated, the agent called back several minutes later to complain that the wrong code had been given. But this time, he spoke to one of the robbers, alerting him of the homeowners' deception.

"Infuriated that Mrs. Brunson had not given Alarmco the correct code, the robbers violently assaulted both Brunsons and intensified their threats that they were going to be killed," the legal action stated.

"As one of the robbers drew his gun directly at Mr. Brunson and told him he was going to die, Mrs. Brunson jumped in between and begged the robbers not to shoot her husband but to shoot her if they must kill someone," the account in the lawsuit continued.

Finally Doyle Brunson offered the bandits $4,000 cash and a pouch containing $80,000 in $5,000 denomination gaming chips from Binion's Horseshoe hotel-casino where he had placed 10th in a World Series of Poker event earlier that day.

When the couple finally convinced the robbers that their demands for even more money couldn't be fulfilled and that there was no safe in the Las Vegas Country Club home, the gunmen retreated through a front door.

Despite being handcuffed together, Louise Doyle managed to retrieve a cellular telephone from her husband's pocket and called 911, which resulted in country club security guards racing to the home, followed by Metro Police.

The lawsuit alleges that Alarmco, which the Brunsons had used since 1974, had represented they would provide "certain security and protection services and, in the event of an emergency, certain protocols would be followed."

The Brunsons relied on those representations and "suffered damages as a result of those misrepresentations," the lawsuit states.

Doyle Brunson, 64, let the alarm activate despite demands by the gunmen to disarm it by faking a heart attack and falling to the floor.

Brunson, the 1976 and '77 world poker champion, "believed that a response from Alarmco was the only chance he and his wife had to live through this ordeal," Keach stated in the lawsuit .

The lawsuit, which alleges Alarmco was negligent, breached its contract with the Brunsons and caused emotional distress, seeks unspecified compensatory and punitive damages in excess of $120,000.

Chief District Judge Myron Leavitt has been assigned to preside over the case.

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