Lawsuit to Challenge Sale of Worthless Lottery Tickets
Since the odds of winning a large lottery prize is already fairly slim, you'd expect the game to at least be fair - right? Officials who run state lotteries say that they are fair - and legal - although in many cases you may have no chance of winning a big prize.
USA Today reported that in New Jersey Lottery's "$1,000,000 Explosion" scratch-off lottery ticket game, the chances of winning the million dollar prize are exactly zero. The tickets are still on sale for those who wish to throw $20 away, but the six top prizes in the game were awarded months ago. Sure, there's still a chance to win up to $10,000, but scratch-off lottery tickets with a top prize of only $10,000 do not generally sell for $20 apiece and most people still playing this ticket believe that they have a chance at winning the million dollar prize.
The "$1,000,000 Explosion" game in New Jersey was New Jersey's first $20 scratch-off lottery ticket and has proved to be very popular. New Jersey Lottery spokesman Dominick DeMarco has said that most of the tickets have already been sold and prizes collected, but the remaining tickets will be sold until they are gone or the game ends on July 21, whichever comes first.
Washington and Lee University business professor Scott Hoover bought a scratch-off lottery ticket in Virginia for $5 last year. The top prize advertised on the ticket was $75,000. After scratching the ticket and realizing that he had not won a prize, out of curiosity, Hoover began researching the actual odds of winning.
He found that the top prize had been awarded a month before he purchased his losing ticket. Using public records, Hoover determined that the Virginia State Lottery sold approximately $20 million worth of stale tickets per year for three years. This $60 million in tickets was sold after all of the top prizes in the games had been awarded. Hoover believes that the players deserve compensation from the state.
Hoover has specifically decided to sue the Virginia State Lottery. Paula Otto, the Virginia State Lottery director says that the scratch-off games are fair. Otto told CNN that the state lottery has always been completely upfront about the way that the lottery tickets are distributed and that although there have been times when tickets were sold after all of the prizes have been claimed, the lottery players already knew that was the case. However, as of July 2007, the Virginia State Lottery has the policy of ending scratch-off lottery games after all of the top prizes are awarded.
In fact, Virginia was not the only state that routinely continued to sell scratch-off lottery tickets after the top prizes were already gone and some states still do. USA Today reported that approximately half of the 42 states that currently have lotteries continue to sell tickets that have no chance of being winners. Florida, New Jersey, Michigan and Tennessee all sell scratch-off tickets after the top prizes have been claimed and the states' lottery commission officials say that the practice is fair because the fine print on the back of the tickets and lottery websites disclose that this is part of the game.
The tickets aren't completely worthless; after all, some of the much smaller prizes may still be still be unclaimed. However, most people who buy lottery tickets are hoping to win more than they paid for the scratch-off ticket, and few, if any, prizes of that size may be left.
Since the introduction of scratch-off lottery tickets with huge jackpot prizes, the sales of higher priced tickets have skyrocketed. Tickets with advertised prizes of $1 million or more are common and the lure of the chance to win that much money instantly draws many players in.
In California, New York, Massachusetts and other states, the scratch-off games now end when the top prizes have been won. Some states made changes to their policies after lawsuits were filed against them. The lawsuits against state lotteries in California, Colorado, Arizona and Washington were unsuccessful in court, but still managed to generate enough bad publicity for the lotteries to influence a change.
