The Kentucky Lottery Corp. has been hit with another lawsuit challenging its Extra Cash game and its advertising.
Keith B. Hunter, former general counsel for the lottery, said he filed the suit last week after seeing a news report about another one filed early this year.
Both his lawsuit and the one filed earlier by Ronald Hub, of Stanton, take issue with the wording in a lottery brochure, which was changed after Hub filed his lawsuit. The original brochure said the single-digit numbers on the ticket would be randomly generated. Hub noticed that digits that didn't match the numbers he had selected were printed on his ticket significantly more often than the numbers that would have allowed him to win.
The lottery's current advertising says that winners - not the numbers on the ticket - are randomly generated. Hunter argues that that's still misleading.
"I don't necessarily think there's a problem with the game if people understand what they're buying," he said.
Hunter said he had played the game in February and the spring using the same numbers repeatedly and thought something was wrong with the game.
The lottery denied any wrongdoing in Hub's lawsuit, which is pending. Its general counsel, William May, said Friday that the response to the basic allegation in the new lawsuit would be similar. May reiterated statements that he made in response to the Hub lawsuit that the wording of the advertising was changed to better reflect the randomness of the game. He also said there was no intent to mislead players.
The lottery cited Extra Cash as one of the factors for its record sales of $673.5 million in the fiscal year that ended in July. The game, which started in January, is an instant-win game based on the numbers a player selects for a Pick 3 or Pick 4 drawing. Extra Cash does not depend on the daily drawings that use balls to select winners. Instead, it uses the numbers a player selects for a drawing to determine whether the player wins the instant game.
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