Posted on 10/25/2007 6:20:52 AM PDT by Anti-Bubba182
For about an hour last August, Gary Hoffman was a very lucky man.
Hoffman was playing the nickel slot machines at the Sandia Resort and Casino on an Indian reservation in New Mexico, when he appeared to hit the jackpot: the machine said he won nearly $1.6 million.
"I became ecstatic," he said.
But the ecstasy was short-lived. Hoffman says in a lawsuit filed earlier this year that Sandia refused to pay, claiming that the machine malfunctioned. Instead, he said, they gave him about $385 and a few free meals at the casino.[snip].....
[snip]Regardless, a jury may never get chance to hear Hoffman's case. Native American tribes, as independent nations, have their own court systems and can be sued in state courts only under limited circumstances. New Mexico law generally does not allow tribes to be sued in a state court over a contract dispute, Kleiman said.....
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
I always wonder when it says ‘malfunction voids all pays’.
How would a player know if it’s really a malfunction or just the Casino not paying? Many jackpots are probably not paid using this excuse.
The more they play these games the more bad publicity they generate and the less it is that people will spend their money there.
Could be. If I went to a casino I would not go to an Indian one.
What to do? Stay away. Play at places where a regulatory body responsible to the public controls how the casino is operated.
Outside of Nevada and New Jersey where are you gonna find a non-Indian casino?
If the casino does not end up making a better offer to this person they risk alienating a number of potential gamblers. From a PR campaign perspective, it would be bad business to not settle this more favorably.
Indian givers?.............
The machine has a disclaimer saying the max payout is $2500. I’d say a message telling you you’ve won over a million is a pretty good indicator of a malfunction.
That being said, I guess the best move is to gamble in the United States, not on an Indian Reservation.
Mississippi, Louisiana......
OK, absurd as that is with a state that has a lottery, here’s what happened.
Those slot machines would only have gone into the type of taverns that already had pull tabs, a form of gambling, not your high-class, family-type restaurants. The antis also didn’t want gambling in their neighborhood.
But here’s the real catcher: the Indians can build casinos only on ‘reservation’ land. So what they do is buy up a few buildings on a block and donate it to the ‘reservation.’ Voila, instant (FULL) gambling where they want it.
I don’t gamble and really don’t care for it. But allowing slots in taverns where they are already allowed to gamble would have put the first chink in the armor of an absurd, tax-free enterprise on lands where the people COULD IMPLEMENT SHARIA LAW, if they so choose.
The people lost. The Indians won. Their casinos continue to pop up. The idiots in Seattle think they won something. Glad I left.
Indiana has at least 4
Monty Python had an insurance sketch in which a man has an accident, goes to his insurance broker who acts very, very sympathetic, but does reveal that the man purchased a "No Payment Policy" which says that no matter what happens to the man, the insurance company doesn't have to pay him. So sorry.
Given this, you’d have to be an idiot to play at one of those casinos.
There are three major non-Indian casinos on the Ohio River in southern Indiana.
This guy is an ass hat .. the same type of malfunctions occur in Vegas Casinos and guess what ... they don’t pay off for the malfunction either ... he should have taken the $2500 ...
now he gets squat ..
Many states have casinos not run by Indians
Mississippi, Louisiana, Missouri, Iowa, South Dakota (Deadwood), Illinois, Indiana, West Virginia (slots only)....
Probably missing a few, but you can avoid the Indian casinos w/out having to go to Vegas or Jersey
Better yet, get an actual life instead of spending time feeding nickles into a machine that will give you back part of them.
Sovereign Immunity sure does not work for tax free tobacco sales.
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