Given the opportunity this week to hit a home run on behalf of the average slot-machine player, the Nevada Supreme Court whiffed.
And it reinforced the belief that Nevada's casinos not only own the ballpark but make up the rules as they go.
The much-publicized case involves a San Jose man, Cengiz Sengel, who lined up the winning slot machine symbols at Reno's Silver Legacy in 1996. Instead of receiving $1.8 million, however, Sengel got a lengthy battle with Nevada regulators.
No lights flashed and no bells went off when the symbols lined up. That's because the dollar-bill changer on the machine had malfunctioned. The internal mechanism of the slot machine - the electronic "guts" that gamblers can't see and wouldn't understand if they could - indicated that Sengel had not, in fact, hit a jackpot.
Ask 1,000 people if they think that's fair, and they'll tell you no. Go ahead and ask a million. Ask whatever number of people it takes to equal the odds that Sengel beat in getting the symbols to line up.
They'll tell you he got cheated. He put his money in the machine, the symbols lined up and he got nothing but headaches.
Sengel's lawyer compared the dollar-bill changer to the kind we use in a Coke machine every day. Think how angry you get when the Coke machine steals your dollar. Now multiply that by 1.8 million.
The capper, however, is how the Supreme Court not only defied logic to defend International Game Technology, but then made a ludicrous ruling that will make it even tougher for the average player to win in court.
"A reviewing court should affirm a decision of the board which is supported by any evidence whatsoever, even if that evidence is less than that which a reasonable mind might accept as adequate to support a conclusion," wrote Justice Myron Leavitt.
Thank you very much for clarifying that the Supreme Court will never be expected to need evidence "which a reasonable mind might accept" in order to make a decision.
Face the truth. This was a decision of, by and for corporate gamers, and Nevada lost something in it worth more than $1.8 million. It lost credibility.
Old-timers like Benny Binion and Bill Harrah who established Nevada's reputation would have paid up, then told IGT to fix the problem with the machine. Instead, we are reminded it's the Supreme Court that malfunctions from time to time.
