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Court: Jordan's furniture giveaway might be a crap shoot, but it's no lottery
By adamg on Mon, 04/18/2011 - 2:55pm
The Massachusetts Appeals Court ruled Friday that Jordan's Furniture's annual Red Sox contest isn't a lottery because nobody pays money specifically to enter it.
For the past several years, the furniture chain has reimbursed people who buy furniture during a set period if the Red Sox do something in particular - at first, win the World Series, but more recently, hit a sign in the outfield.
A customer, Gisela Levin, sued over the 2008 version, claiming the giveaway was a private lottery, which is illegal in Massachusetts. But in its decision, the court noted that none of the purchase price of the furniture went toward the potential prize - which nobody won since the Red Sox failed to win the World Series that year.
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Comments
*eye roll* someone has too
*eye roll*
someone has too much time and money on their hands.. sounds to me like she's upset that she didnt win, so she's going to sue them.
she gets a big *WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH*
And hopefully
It'll be ruled that this opportunistic douche has to pay Jordan's legal bills for filing a unfounded lawsuit.
Maybe next time he can slip and fall coming out of a IMAX movie.
He?
What "he" are you referring to? The plaintiff is a woman.
I don't know about this decision.
How do they know that nobody bought any furniture "specifically" because of the promotion, instead of putting off the purchase or shopping at Bob's or whatever? Isn't that the whole point of the promotion?
Sort of an unconvincing little argument. Whether there's an exemption to the state law for promotional lotteries would seem to be a more relevant line of inquiry.
Lottery decision
Seems like the point is that they gave money to Jordans and got a piece of furniture in return. And oh, BTW, you're entered into a lottery, too. There was an apparently fair transaction involved. That seems fine to me.
Sometimes though, something like this can be stretched to the point of absurdity where the court may have had issues. For example, you pay $25K for a key and get a free car.
What I don't understand is why someone would file suit over this. I could see the state going after Jordan's, but an individual?
Not what it says
The question is whether anyone walked into Jordan's and handed them $500 and said "I'll be back for this when the Sox hit that baseball sign, otherwise you can keep it."...and then walked right back out the front door. That may sound absurd, but it's exactly what lottery players do every day.
Think about how the lottery is played. You give over cash. They give you a chance to win. If your chance occurs, then they pay you some portion of the money they brought in from selling you and others chances. That's not what happened here.
One of the reasons my first example sounds absurd, too, is that nobody would play the lottery if they thought their expected maximum return was only the money they put in. What would be the point? In the case of Jordan's, you're buying furniture with that money, but Jordan's is willing to give you a 100% refund if some rare event occurs. You could turn this on its head. Let's say that the promotion is that on one day in the Spring, you can go to any Jordan's and tell them what $500 worth of furniture you will accept FOR FREE if the rare event occurs, but you then have to walk out the door without the furniture just hoping that the rare event occurs. When it does, ONLY those people that came in earlier and told them what they wanted will be gifted those things. If the rare event doesn't occur, you have to come in and actually pay for and receive the furniture anyways like any other purchase. See? Still not a lottery, just a convoluted way to buy furniture.
I see what you're saying
although the "maximum return" isn't just "what you put in", but that amount plus an asset roughly equivalent to that amount (the furniture), right?
Not specifically for my example
I was trying to take the furniture out of the equation to determine if the cash moving around was "lottery-like" for the purposes of giving the lawsuit the benefit of the doubt....to stand the contest on its head and see if it looks like a lottery at all. Essentially, if you walk in, hand them money, and expect in the case of a rare event that they'll hand you that same amount back, the furniture isn't at issue. Even if you include the furniture, it's still not a lottery.
If you want to include the furniture in the equation, then I hand them the money, they hand me free furniture and I tell them that I'll be back if the rare event occurs to get my money back, otherwise I lose it to their lottery pool. The furniture didn't change the nature of the most "lottery-like" way of viewing the gamble being proposed....it's just a consolation prize for not having the rare event occur. Imagine if with every scratch-off ticket you buy from the state, they also give you a free stick of gum. That doesn't change the fundamental nature of the lottery game at all.
You're right, it bumps up the maximal return in terms of determining the value return in a decision model (and I could have said that in my original post) of whether to play or not...but given that the best you can do monetarily is to get your money back...and ONLY in the case of a rare event... Well, you don't need to run the whole decision model to realize that you shouldn't be getting involved based on the return...unless you were going to buy the furniture in the first place anyways. A rational actor would only see this as a boon for a required furniture purchase. Good thing for Jordan's there are a lot of non-rational actors in the world.
She should sue the Sox next
For not winning the World Series!
Then she should sue herself, for not buying furniture the previous year, when they DID win it all.
Finally, she should sue everybody, for punitive damages. And when the court date is set, she should bring all her shoes, and glasses. So she has them.