Crown and Aristocrat cleared by Australian court

The lawsuit against Crown and Aristocrat for allegedly using a “deceptive design” to mislead players has been dismissed.

Australia.- Crown Resorts Ltd. and Aristocrat Technologies Australia Pty Ltd. have been cleared by a Federal Court in Victoria. The judge ruled on Friday and dismissed the case for using a slot machine “deceptively designed to mislead players,” which had started in 2016.

Shonica Guy, a former gambling addict, pushed the lawsuit and her lawyers tried to prove the Dolphin Treasure machine was misleading. However, judge Debbie Mortimer of the Australian Federal Court ruled that there might be some misleading bits on the machine but they would be “dispelled as soon as [the player] actually starts gambling and the randomness of the machine operation and the returns become apparent”.

“The impression is fleeting and may cause confusion but it is not misleading or deceptive as the law defines those concepts,” she argued.

“Aristocrat is a high-integrity business that takes our regulatory obligations extremely seriously. We strive to scrupulously uphold our obligations with respect to EGM [electronic gaming machine] compliance,” parent company Aristocrat Leisure said last Friday in a filing to the Australian Securities Exchange.