Settlement reached in widow's jackpot dispute with Harrah's

pressofatlanticcity.com/news/breaking/articl…

excerpt: %26#39;Terms of the settlement are confidential%26#39;

excerpt: %26#39;...reached a settlement with the casino just days before her lawsuit was scheduled to go to trial%26#39;

Settlement reached in widow's jackpot dispute with Harrah's

I wonder if they would be able to produce that so-called winner from Trump%26#39;s? I would have gone to trial!

Settlement reached in widow's jackpot dispute with Harrah's

No loss to them.....they paid it with acmama%26#39;s cash back!!!!!!!

Bill

I hate confidential settlements!! I want to know what she got.

I wonder if after she paid her lawyer it was more than the $20k they initially offered her.

they gave her two free passes to the buffet

Free Room Sun-Thursday

The way I read it was that the 20k (size of the reset jackpot) was paid to her when she hit. The additional 66k was the amount in dispute, and the amount subject to a lawyers % if she recovered anything.

Why did they settle?

They certainly didn%26#39;t have to. Legally, this woman didn%26#39;t have a leg to stand on. Some progressive meters don%26#39;t reset until the jackpot is verified... That is how they work. If she had won in court it would have set a precedent saying:

Individual Casinos are responsible for

High Jackpot (86k in this case) minus

Reset Jackpot(20k in this case)= 66k liability

From the time a Jackpot is hit until it can be verifed (and the meter resets). Even if the jackpot is paid from a pool of casinos and/or the slot manufacturer.

Now imagine if this same situation happens on those $5(2 coin) ';wheel of gold'; machines where the jackpot was over 4MM last time I looked.

No way is a judge going to put that kind of liability on the casinos.

Only reason I can think is that they settled to avoid continuing to pay lawyers $XXX/hr. Maybe they figured it was cheaper to throw her 10k(guess) than to go through hundreds of lawyer hours at this trial and subsequent appeals. Since money is so tight at HET this may make some sense.

Two other things, if anyone sees this woman:

1. Tell her that if she had been looking at the progressive meter while playing and paused even for a tenth of a second had the prog meter reset (from 86 to 20) the RNG would have been in a different position and she never would have hit the 20k.

2. Don%26#39;t expect her to tell you about the settlement.

%26gt;%26gt;No way is a judge going to put that kind of liability on the casinos%26lt;%26lt; I am a PA resident. civil lawsuits are decided by a jury in PA. if NJ also settles civil lawsuits by jury, I can tell u from experience serving on juries, that u never know what will happen when a jury decides

Rship%26#39;s response was pretty much what I was about to say. Who knows what a jury will do?

(I did agree that legally she had no case. But not enough to throw out of court.)

I think there is enough support for the ';underdog'; against the ';big casino'; that they felt they needed to pay her.

Even if the casino was 100% right, you have to at least give her credit for willing to fight and I hope she made out a little bit for the trouble.

ship - you are right, her lawyer would not have wanted a bench trial

As far as credit, she (Ms. Widow) only gets some for not understanding the system in which she was playing.

Sure she would have played the sweet lady on the stand and said ';I couldn%26#39;t believe it they took my jackpot, the sign said I won 86,000 ...... They already win so many millions, now they want to cheat me ';

HET would have shown the Trump Jackpot winner and put some IGT reps/techs up to explain how the system worked

Even with a Jury trial I%26#39;d give her a 10% chance tops @ a 66k judgement. EV = $6600 before lawyers take.

If they gave her 10k to settle she made out like a bandit.