Gardener wins £1m lawsuit against Paddy Power after jackpot dispute
Corrinne Durber took legal action against a gambling company after it claimed she had won the daily jackpot instead of the ’monster jackpot’
When Corrinne Durber was told by Paddy Power she had won £1m but received only £20,000 she had a choice: fold or double down.
The gardener from Gloucestershire went for the latter and on Wednesday her tenacity paid off – she won a high court case forcing the gambling giant to hand over exactly £1,076,867.57.
Speaking after the court decision, Durber said: “As you can imagine, I’m so relieved and happy that the judge has confirmed I fairly and squarely won £1m from Paddy Power.
“But why couldn’t Paddy Power pay up straight away instead of putting me through this legal torment? I will never bet with them ever again, and I advise others to be very careful, too.”
She added that Paddy Power had “tried their very best to deny me my rightful winnings”.
“What’s the point in betting if betting companies like Paddy Power won’t pay up when someone wins a big jackpot?”
Durber had been playing the Wild Hatter game in October 2020, which was described as a combination of a fruit machine and a wheel of fortune-style game with two parts. After moving to the second part and spinning the jackpot wheel, her iPad screen displayed she had won the “monster jackpot”, which was stated as £1,097,132.71 on the day she played.
However, she was paid only £20,265.14 and told she had won the smaller daily jackpot, with the difference attributed to an error with the game’s display as it had been malprogrammed and pointed to the wrong prize.
Durber sued PPB Entertainment Limited, which trades as Paddy Power and Betfair, for breach of contract and the rest of her winnings, based on what she was shown on screen.
In a judgment in her favour handed down on Wednesday, Mr Justice Ritchie said that the idea of “what you see is what you get” was “central” to the game.
In a 62-page ruling, he said: “Objectively, customers would want and expect that what was to be shown to them on screen to be accurate and correct.
“The same expectation probably applies when customers go into a physical casino and play roulette. They expect the house to pay out on the roulette wheel if they bet on number 13 and the ball lands on number 13.”
After the ruling, a spokesperson for Flutter UKI, which owns Paddy Power, said: “Every week tens of thousands of customers win with Paddy Power, including an individual who received a £5.7m jackpot just one year ago.
“We always strive to provide the best customer experience possible and pride ourselves on fairness. We deeply regret this unfortunate case and are reviewing the judgment.”
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