Ontario Lottery wont pay slot jackpot

[jay]

http://ca.yahoo.com/s/871106

[stayouttadabunker]

They should have given him the 9 thousand odd dollars for the top award on the glass at least....and avoided the negative publicity...
instead, the  heads gave him nothing....idiots

[StatFreak]

They should have given him the 9 thousand odd dollars for the top award on the glass at least....and avoided the negative publicity...
instead, the  heads gave him nothing....idiots

I wouldn't have taken the 9k had they offered it. That would be admitting that the prize wasn't 42 million, and acceptance of the 9k could be legally shown to be an agreement between the casino and the patron as to the amount of the win. He's better off suing.

[Brianzz]

odds of top jackpot contain 60 zeros? 

[jay]

There are a number of mis representations in that report.
60 x 0's is one of them.

Another is that no jackpot in North America is worth 42mm. The megabucks has easily gotten up over that amount and progressives in general are much higher than the top award.

[stayouttadabunker]

Oh, he won the progressive? I thought he just won the top award on a machine....LAWSUIT!

[Brianzz]

This sounds like another case of the machine was set up wrong. Video slot set up to be a progressive although it's not.

[jay]

I don't know that he did hit the progressive.
I am sure the 9K is the NON-Progressive amount
but it was the casinos statement that NO jackpot is worth 42mm

I am sure it had to be a misconfigured machine displaying a progressive amount....otherwise how else would it come up with 42mm ?

There is a big difference between human error in the configuration and a malfunction......

[stayouttadabunker]

yeah...the "malfunction that voids all plays and pays" was the casino employee who configured it...
there probably was NOT a malfunction of the machine or progressive system.
 
 With that in mind, is it not true that that progressives in most casinos are configured and programmed
by (for example)  IGT, Williams, or Bally workers?
The reason I ask is because I thought that these companies get a cut of the progressive pie?
So they would want to have their own workers set up and configure the progressives along with a casino employee?

[Brianzz]

The only progressives set up by gaming manufacture employees are WAP's like Wheel of Fortune, Megabucks, etc.... ie. all leased games that have progressives.

[a69mopar]

Georgian downs is about 45 minutes from my house.  I have had machines that came from there before, only they worked great.
Thanks for the info,
Wayne

[stayouttadabunker]

The winner's lawyer's only have to prove that the "malfunction" was NOT the machine.

Doesn't the disclaimer say this in fact: "All machine mulfunctions voids all pays and plays",
not human error....or does that disclaimer cover "Human errors"?

[tjkeller]

Now that's just plain MESSED UP!

[a69mopar]

The winner's lawyer's only have to prove that the "malfunction" was NOT the machine.

Doesn't the disclaimer say this in fact: "All machine mulfunctions voids all pays and plays",
not human error....or does that disclaimer cover "Human errors"?

I'm pretty sure it says Malfunction voids all pays and plays, I'll have to check downstairs to be sure.

W

[Brianzz]

If the machine was set up wrong it's considered a machine malfunction

[a69mopar]

yes, IGT  & WMS say MALFUNCTION VOIDS ALL PAYS AND PLAYS, BALLY SAYS MALFUNCTION VOIDS ALL PLAYS AND PAYS
the Williams machine says it in French also.

[stayouttadabunker]

okay,
If this happened to you...purely hypothetical...how would you like your lawyer to present your case?

[a69mopar]

I would hope they bring the integrity of the OLG and the Casinos run by them into this.  They will likely settle for a lesser amount which will also be undisclosed, my guess would be a million Canadian dollars (approx $769000 U.S.)
If the machine was a progressive, they sometimes have a limit posted, I wonder if this one had it posted.

Thanks,
Wayne

[stayouttadabunker]

I think the word "Malfunction" covers most bases I'm afraid  ...My guess is that poor sucker will not get a dime.

[Op-Bell]

A bit of case law would seem to be indicated here. I'm not a lawyer but I know a bit of law.

The "malfunction" thing dates back to a case in Nevada in the 1970s, where one of the machines had some sort of failure and came to rest on a jackpot - actually just off the line, but more on than off. I believe it was a Bally EM where the mechanism hung up and the reels coasted to a stop. The casino denied, the player sued, and a Nevada court ruled that if it said on the glass that 7777 pays $X and the casino accepted a player's money, this constituted a binding contract between the casino and the player, and if the machine stopped on 7777 - for any reason - this fulfilled the terms of the contract and they were legally obliged to pay up, which they did. The disclaimer signs hurriedly appeared after that. The "malfunction" defense has been upheld ever since in Nevada, although that's not a real test, since Nevada judges know who their campaign contributors are. More specifically, in the case of the Ontario Lottery, the contract between the player and the casino can only be for the maximum amount shown on the glass, or on the payout screen if that's all it has, before the player inserts money for the winning game. So unless the machine was displaying $42 million somewhere on its glass or on an associated display before the guy started his last game, he hasn't got a contract and he hasn't got a case.

This would be different than if a WAP failed while it was actually showing the top jackpot amount. The case I best remember about this happened in one of the New Mexico or Arizona casinos about 12 years ago, and it was IGT that denied the payment, not the casino. I think it was a Wheel of Fortune and the amount was about $300k. The player sued and the casino eventually paid him out of court, seeing it as their responsibility, although IGT had pocketed the jackpot money. Sadly, the slot manager committed suicide.

[stayouttadabunker]

So, with this case work in mind, I'd like to retract my earlier statement and bet that the player gets the 9K instead of the progressive.
Since, the casinos "intention" for the highest award for that particular machine was deemed to be about 9K?

[StatFreak]

There are a number of mis representations in that report.
60 x 0's is one of them.

Another is that no jackpot in North America is worth 42mm. The megabucks has easily gotten up over that amount and progressives in general are much higher than the top award.

Isn't is amazing how badly supposedly professional journalists can screw up the facts? 60 zeros? That's a number larger than the estimate of the number of known stars in the universe squared (The number is estimated to be about 7x10²², but perhaps as few as 1x10²² and as much as 1x10²⁴). In fact, it's closer to the number of known stars in the universe CUBED (although not quite. 7E22³ is about 343 million times larger than 1E60, or 3.43x10⁶⁸).

Even the longest long-shot that I know of in any casino -- hitting 20 out of 20 in Keno (yes they have such a ticket, and usually charge a $5 minimum to play it!) would have only 18 zeros in it if only the most significant digit were used: 4E18 (3.535x10¹⁸), or 3.54 pentillion to 1. The line forms on the right to buy tickets.

To get an idea of how large these numbers are, the earth is estimated to be about 4.55 billion years old. If we use 365.25 as an approximation of the number of days in a year, there have been 1.436x10¹⁷ seconds in that time. If you played one game of keno every single second since the earth was formed, you would have had only a 1 in 24 chance of hitting the darned thing in all this time -- and that's a number with only 18 zeros after it.

[StatFreak]

So, with this case work in mind, I'd like to retract my earlier statement and bet that the player gets the 9K instead of the progressive.
Since, the casinos "intention" for the highest award for that particular machine was deemed to be about 9K?

I think that was Op-Bell is saying is that the player probably won't be able to recover more than the highest amount that was displayed to him just prior to placing the wager, including any progressive signage, messages displayed by the machine, and award glass.

My question is, how does this lawyer, or the patron, for that matter, lay a foundation in the first place? What I mean is, what would happen if the unfortunate player had no camera (cell phone) and couldn't get the casino to bring in gaming officials or the police at the time of the incident to take an official report? After all, they stonewalled him and gave him buffet comps. What does an individual do when on private property and facing an uncooperative management? I'm not necessarily speaking of this particular incident, but just in general.

[Op-Bell]

What does an individual do when on private property and facing an uncooperative management?

I would think that for such a large jackpot, there would be plenty of witnesses rubbernecking. I only saw one once, $1 million on Dollar WoF at the Orleans, but there was a large crowd gathered around.

[a69mopar]

It is all taped by the eye in the sky, especially after the jackpot hit, the camera would be on it. I'm sure the OLG kept a copy of the tape.

W