There is nothing in newsagencies that causes large legal cases as lotto does. I suppose no-one will go to court over a dollar paper but in lotto, millions are at stake.
For those not aware of this case. A person Mr Reinhold bought an Oz Lotto ticket at the Macarthur Newsagency at Campbelltown on September 19, 2005. Because of some problems the ticket did not print correctly so Mr Reinhold was given another ticket. Later the given ticket was cancelled under instructions from NSW lotto. As Murphy's Law would have it that cancelled ticket had the numbers for the $2 million jackpot. As it was cancelled Mr Reinhold could not collect his winning, so he went to court. Mr Reinhold won two million dollars.
Okay who is going to pay that $2 million dollars in allocating blame the NSW supreme court decided that since it was
"Lotteries that controlled the computer system and had the means of searching within it. The Newsagents could do nothing except give information to Lotteries and wait for Lotteries to give them a number to use as the TSN of the ticket to be cancelled. The shortcoming of the Newsagents was to fail to volunteer information that should have been volunteered. Nor, of course, was that information requested by Lotteries as it should have been."
In other words, the newsagency failed to volunteer the required information even though NSW lotto official did not ask for it, so the court has decided the newsagency must pay 10% of the two million dollars to Mr Reinhold plus interest. That sum now totals $ 246,011.14, the remaining amount NSW Lotto will have to pay.
The full decision is available here. It is worth a look for some unexpected risks you can come up in selling lotto however be warned it is 24 pages long.
Reinhold v New South Wales Lotteries Corporation [2008] NSWSC 5
Note whether the case is over remains to be seen but this is where is it now.
