What's the Rule?
Any and all feedback welcomed on this one...

...Ok, so, i'm playing Omaha at Pechanga on Saturday night and I'm half tilted but not so bad. I've already had one incident with this woman who's husband or boyfriend or whatever is sitting behind her and it's almost like they're playing "poker by comittee". Nothing illegal, but he's looking at her cards and they're discussing hands ad nauseum after the fact, they're just a really annoying couple.

So, now it's later in the session and i'm involved in a multiway pot with the second nut low. It should be noted at this time that i am in my least favorite seat, the #9 Seat. that being said, the player in the #1 Seat has acted out of turn on several occasions already; folding out of turn, betting and raising out of turn. Part of the reason is that being in the #1 Seat, it's not really easy to see if the #9 seat still has cards or not, but the other reason is that he's kind of an idiot. Back to the hand, I am very low on chips and have decided that i'm going to get all of my money in with my second nut low. On the river, he is first to act and when he bets out, three players in front of me fold and after he watched them fold, he very weakly tossed his cards toward the muck, not remembering that I still had a hand and had not acted. The dealer put his left hand over the player's cards and I could have sworn that they touched the muck, which was situated close by, on the dealer's left. I perked up immediately; "did they touch the muck?" I asked. The dealer shook his head no, and is now in the process of pushing the cards back to the player in Seat #1. Not a word more was spoken, but i could tell by the uneasyness of his body language that he knew something was not cool.

So, I have a few questions:

Is the lobbing of cards, face down, in a forward motion, enough to consider a hand mucked?

do the cards have to actually hit the muck pile to be considered mucked?

would you have made a bigger deal out of it if you were me? I think i would have been well within my rights to call the floor there. In the end, i did nothing.

I know it's kind of a scum-baggy way to scoop a pot, but the rules are the rules and they're there for a reason.. Also, maybe this brain-dead donkey would have learned a valuable lesson about acting out of turn.