JACKPOTS DENIED
Lawsuits over casinos denying jackpots are hit or miss
By Frank Legato
Today’s malfunctions are almost always a result of the reels not stopping where the computer tells them to, or the video screen displaying a different result than what was selected by the computer’s RNG.
There have been several stories of late in the press involving casinos refusing to pay jackpots which, by all appearances, have been won by players.
Normally, cases like these involve a computer malfunction, and casinos defend their positions by pointing to the disclaimer that has always appeared on slot machines: “Machine malfunction voids all play.”
In the days when slots were mechanical, a machine malfunction was like a “tilt” message on a pinball machine. The reels didn’t line up, the power went off, coins fell out into the hopper without a win, or some other obvious mechanical or electrical malfunction rendered a pay that shouldn’t have happened.
The malfunction possibility became more confusing after slots became computerized with the “virtual reel” technology in the early 1980s. With this technology, numbers are assigned to each symbol or blank on a machine’s reel strip or video reels, and a random number generator (RNG) program cycles through all possible results and freezes a complete result when the player initiates a spin.
Today’s malfunctions are almost always a result of the reels not stopping where the computer tells them to, or the video screen displaying a different result than what was selected by the computer’s RNG. That’s why, when a hand-pay jackpot occurs, an attendant opens the slot door to check the last result arrived at by the computer. It almost always matches, and the player is paid.
Nearly all the jackpot disputes you hear about result from the machine displaying a result the computer did not arrive at. Sometimes, the casino’s position is strong—one recent case, for instance, involved a computer monitor that displayed a $2 million jackpot on a game with a top jackpot of only $5,000.
Others are not so cut and dried. One of those is the case of Roney Beal versus Bally’s Atlantic City and IGT, which has been all over the news for weeks.
Beal was playing an IGT Wheel of Fortune machine at Bally’s when the required symbols lined up for a $1.2 million jackpot at 2X—$2.4 million. She was told it was a technical glitch.
When the result appeared, according to what she told a local news station, other players gathered around to help her celebrate. When she hit the service button on the slot machine, a message appeared that read “tilted.”
“When the man came over to talk to me, he said, ‘Lady, get it in your head, you won nothing,’” she told the news reporter from WPVI-TV. The attendant opened the machine and asked her to “spin it off” by hitting the spin button. She refused, after which the attendant hit different buttons inside, and offered her $350. She is suing Bally’s and IGT, which guarantees jackpots on its Wheel of Fortune games.
“They fooled with the machine before anybody else had the opportunity to take a look at this,” Beal’s attorney Mike DiCroce told the TV reporter, noting that the slot attendant may have tampered with evidence of the win. DiCroce is asking the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement to preserve the machine and casino floor videos for an independent forensic review.
There is much case history on disputes such as this, and while players have won a few, most have come back on the casino side. Each machine’s computer retains a history of spins, and casinos have been able to point to the computer results to validate the RNG’s selection of results, and thus, what the display should have shown the player. Judges have generally held that the computer result is the valid result, regardless of what the player saw.
It’s difficult for players to understand this, but reels and video screens are only mechanisms to display the result arrived at by the computer. It’s frustrating, to be sure, and unfair to the player. Some casinos have acknowledged the frustration with an out-of-court settlement—usually a lot more than the $350 Beal was offered.
While casinos generally have successfully defended such malfunction lawsuits, another recent case should get any player’s blood boiling. Michigan resident Denise Ezell was playing on a progressive blackjack table at MGM Grand Detroit. After she made the progressive side bet, her cards lined up the right combination with the dealer’s cards for the $127,000 jackpot.
The dealer announced that she had won the jackpot. The pit boss subsequently told her the casino would not pay because she was trespassing.
The pit boss said she was trespassing because of an incident in 2015 when she was accused of panhandling following an argument with another person at the casino. It turns out she had asked her cousin, who had come to the casino with her, for some of the money she had given the cousin previously, an argument ensued, and she was escorted off the property.
According to Ezell, she was not told she was banned from the casino, and has continued to gamble there for the past nine years. A security guard even confirmed that after the pit boss told her she was trespassing, telling her, “Don’t worry about them saying you were trespassing; we are going to get you your jackpot.” He was overruled by the casino.
Ezell is suing for the jackpot plus $75,000 in damages.
This one’s not the case of a machine malfunction. It’s an employee malfunction. First, it was a misunderstanding that led her to be escorted from the property in 2015. Second, the casino happily took her money and treated her like any other customer for nine years after the incident. The casino had no problem with Ezell until they were faced with paying out after her extremely lucky turn of the cards.
She wasn’t told she couldn’t play. She didn’t cheat. She made the progressive bet. The dealer lined up the winning cards.
Pay the woman.
