  GRB 990123 established the existence of prompt optical emission from
gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). The Livermore Optical Transient Imaging System (LOTIS)
has been conducting a fully automated search for this kind of simultaneous low
energy emission from GRBs since October 1996. Although LOTIS has obtained
simultaneous, or near simultaneous, coverage of the error boxes obtained with
BATSE, IPN, XTE, and BeppoSAX for several GRBs, image analysis resulted in only
upper limits. The unique gamma-ray properties of GRB 990123, such as very large
fluence (top 0.4%) and hard spectrum, complicate comparisons with more typical
bursts. We scale and compare gamma-ray properties, and in some cases afterglow
properties, from the best LOTIS events to those of GRB 990123 in an attempt to
determine whether the prompt optical emission of this event is representative
of all GRBs. Furthermore, using LOTIS upper limits in conjunction with the
relativistic blast wave model, we weakly constrain the GRB and afterglow
parameters such as density of the circumburster medium and bulk Lorentz factor
of the ejecta.
