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Another Casino Vs. Gambler Case Heads to Trial (1 of 2)

Last week, we broke the news that Mississippi slot game player Florida Eash had been on the losing end of a state Supreme Court decision regarding the ongoing dispute between Eash and the IP Casino in Biloxi. Eash was playing a $5 Double Top Double slot machine terminal in February 2006 when she landed a jackpot. The machine registered a prize of one million dollars ($1,000,000), even though the top prize for that game as posted on the game’s pay table is only eight thousand dollars. After a protracted legal gamut, the Supreme Court of Mississippi decided that the IP Casino was not responsible for the programming error that led to the “regrettable” mistake, and that Eash should only win the eight thousand dollars. It seems that Angela Domino will be luckier, if an arbitration panel’s decision is allowed to stand in a case between the septuagenarian widow and Harrah’s Resort of Atlantic City, New Jersey.

Domino was playing a five cent Spin Poker progressive slot machine game at Harrah’s in May 2007 when she hit a winning hand – four aces and a joker. That particular game title is based around the rules of poker, and awards payouts based on the “hand” (combination of symbols) landed. In Domino’s case, her hand was a jackpot combination for the progressive prize. The machine displayed a prize of eighty-six thousand dollars, the supposed current amount of the progressive slot machine’s jackpot. (Progressive jackpots are ones that grow with every bet that is placed and not won, often to huge amounts of money.) The only problem? No less than three minutes earlier – but still earlier than Domino, a player at the Trump Marina Hotel Casino had hit the same jackpot while playing another terminal of the same game. The way that progressive jackpots hit such stellar and attractive levels is by being linked to many other terminals at casinos throughout Atlantic City.

Continue to part 2 here.

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