Looks like CWN have to 'take on' Maurice Blackburn as well as China. article 6 weeks old. What happened re this case?
Crown casino, Aristocrat face lawsuit alleging deceptive conduct over poker machines
Shonica Guy is taking Crown casino and Aristocrat games to court but she isn't trying to recoup any money. What she wants is a declaration that the pokie machines she played for 14 years are deceptive.
Shonica Guy says playing the pokies took over her life. Photo: Eddie Jim
Maurice Blackburn, which is acting pro bono for Ms Guy, will formally write to Crown and Aristocrat over the popular Dolphin Treasure pokies game on Monday.
"The machines are actually designed to take your money; as soon as I touched the machine I was hooked. There is a fine line between gambling and entertainment," she said.
Australians gamble away more than 11 billlion a year on pokies. Photo: Andrew Meares
"I just want people to know that they are being conned."
Dolphin Treasure has been analysed by researchers at Monash University, and the legal action will focus on the uneven spread of symbols needed to win across the five "reels" central to the game.
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The legal challenge will also look into all the design features, including what is claimed to be a system in which losses are disguised as wins through images and sounds.
Ms Guy started playing the pokies in Adelaide when she was just 17, at a club near her house.
Illustration: Matt Golding.
She continued to play for 14 years, especially at her local shopping centre, where she worked, often playing during lunch breaks and after work.
"It took over my life; half my life was wasted. I was hypnotised for a decade, I didn't know I was hooked, then someone said, 'I think you are hooked'," Ms Guy said.
"I thought I had a fair chance of winning, but I found out that they are rigged. They trick with design features."
She said it was clear that machines were designed to give punters a sense that they were scoring wins when in reality they were losing money.
The legal action is being supported by the Alliance for Gambling Reform, which is tired of waiting for governments to act on Australia's poker machine losses.
Alliance spokesman and long-time pokies campaigner Tim Costello acknowledged that the legal action would be an incredibly tough fight.
"This is the people versus Packer. And it's about time the people had a real win," Mr Costello said.
"Adding Aristocrat to the case means it's now become David versus Goliaths. There are effectively two Goliaths. We can't let pokies money win the day this time."
If the machines are proved to be misleading and deceptive, there will be major ramifications for the multibillion-dollar industry as well as state governments that receive billions in tax revenue from pokies.
Australians lose more than $11 billion on the pokies every year. Some $2.5 billion is lost in Victoria alone, with $1 billion flowing to state coffers through taxes. Crown has a licence to operate 2628 poker machines.
The companies will have two weeks to respond to the claims and try to work out a resolution before proceedings begin in the Federal Court. Barrister Ron Merkel, QC, will represent Ms Guy pro bono if the case proceeds to court.
Maurice Blackburn principal and head of social justice practice Jacob Varghese said the machine's display gives the impression that punters have a realistic chance of winning, when in fact they do not.
"We think it is reasonable for a player to assume that each reel has an even distribution of symbols. We want the machines to be fair; what you see should be what you get, but that is not the case," he said.
Crown and Aristocrat did not wish to comment.
http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/c...duct-over-poker-machines-20160904-gr8ad5.html
