UK woman and Camelot locked in court battle over disagreement about prize amount

By Kate Northrop

A UK woman is going head-to-head with National Lottery operator Camelot in court to determine whether her prize is worth £1 million (US$1.2 million) or £10.

Joan Parker-Grennan is currently locked in a court battle to get Camelot to pay her the £1 million prize she says she is owed.

Camelot is disputing her claim, saying that she only won £10.

On Tuesday, lawyers said that Parker-Grennan had played the lottery online and bought an Instant Win Game ticket on Aug. 25, 2015. The game rules indicated that, if a number in the "Your Numbers" section of the screen matched in the "Winning Numbers" section, the two matching numbers would turn white. This would mean the player had won the prize "designated by those matching numbers."

Camelot attorneys told the presiding judge that a "technical issue" caused a number with a designated prize of £1 million to be highlighted, and that Parker-Grennan had only won £10. This error caused the system to announce to her that she had won the prize "designated by those matching numbers."

"At the point" the player bought her ticket, Camelot argued, their computer system had experienced a "technical" issue between August 25 and 26, 2015 that caused "different graphical animations" to show on the screen that resulted in Parker-Grennan seeing two other matching numbers with a designated prize of £1 million in addition to the ones indicating her £10 prize.

The dispute's proceedings have reached a deadlock, but both parties are adamant that they will win the trial. Parker-Grennan is confident that she is "bound" to beat Camelot in court.

"There is, at the lowest, a real prospect of Camelot successfully defending [Parker-Grennan's] claim at trial," Barrister Philip Hinks, head of Camelot's legal team, said in a written statement. "It is inappropriate for [the] claim to be determined summarily."

On the other hand, Barrister James Couser, Parker-Grennan's representing attorney, said that Camelot had "no real prospect of the claim being successfully defended" and that the "dispute between the parties [was] actually quite a narrow one."

"The defendant says that the terms mean that the claimant is bound by what it intended the outcome of the game to have been, despite the fact that was not what the game was programmed to do accorded with what the relevant contractual term said it could do," Couser elaborated."

Justice Jay, the pressing judge, finished overseeing the latest stage of the case on Wednesday, describing the matter as "interesting." He aims to deliver a ruling in the near future, he said.