Georgia Lottery Corp. v. Sumner

• Citation: 242 Ga. App. 758,529 S.E.2d 925
• Decision Date: 14 March 2000
• Docket Number: No. A99A2010, No. A99A2011.
• Parties: GEORGIA LOTTERY CORPORATION v. SUMNER. Sumner v. Georgia Lottery Corporation.
• Court: United States Court of Appeals (Georgia)

529 S.E.2d 925

242 Ga. App. 758

GEORGIA LOTTERY CORPORATION v. SUMNER.

Sumner v. Georgia Lottery Corporation.

Nos. A99A2010, A99A2011.

Court of Appeals of Georgia.

March 14, 2000.

Certiorari Denied June 30, 2000.

Thurbert E. Baker, Attorney General, Daniel M. Formby, Deputy Attorney General, Shereen M. Walls, Assistant Attorney General, Troutman Sanders, Norman L. Underwood, James K. Quillian, Julia M. Gonzalez, Atlanta, Samantha J. Kavanaugh, Miami, FL, for appellant.

Gregory, Christy & Maniklal, Hardy Gregory, Jr., Gary C. Christy, Cordele, James G. Williams, St. Simons Island, for appellee.

BARNES, Judge.

The Georgia Lottery Corporation ("GLC") and Darryl Sumner each appeal the trial court's denial of their motions for summary judgment regarding payment of winnings on a lottery ticket. Sumner contends that he holds a winning ticket; the GLC contends he does not. For the reasons that follow, we affirm the denial of summary judgment to GLC and reverse the denial of summary judgment to Sumner.

Sumner bought a lottery ticket for the instant game "Nifty 50s." On the front of the ticket were the following words:

WIN UP TO $50 A DAY FOR 5 YEARS!

Match either of the lucky numbers to any of your numbers, win prize underneath it.

Get a $$, double prize underneath it.

Get "[symbol]", win $50 a day for 5 years.

The symbol on the card was a black circle with a white center containing a smaller black circle in its middle.

Sumner scratched the latex off the two lucky number boxes and the ten play boxes and uncovered a mark that looked similar to the winning symbol, except that it was red. Below the red mark was written:

SIX

$4

FORDOL

Believing he had won $50 a day for five years, Sumner presented his lottery ticket to a GLC retailer, but the ticket did not pass a computer-based validation test. Sumner then went to the GLC's district office in Macon, where a clerk again ran the card through a validation machine and told him it was not a winner. He submitted a claim form and subsequently received a letter from GLC's senior vice president and general counsel notifying him that the Nifty 50s game had been discontinued because some of the tickets contained a printing error. His ticket had the printing error on it and did not have the requisite caption, which would have been printed below the symbol and would have read:

RCRD

5 YRS

$50/DAY

Additionally, the ticket did not pass the validation and security tests, and for these reasons it was not a winner, the GLC official explained.

Sumner sued the GLC for breach of contract. The GLC answered, denying that Sumner held a winning ticket. Both parties moved for summary judgment, and the trial court denied both motions.

1. The ticket itself states that all lottery transactions are subject to state law. The GLC is prohibited by statute from paying prizes on tickets that are produced in error and do not pass its validation and security tests. OCGA § 50-27-24(c)(2) provides:

No prize shall be paid arising from claimed tickets that are stolen, counterfeit, altered, fraudulent, unissued, produced or issued in error, unreadable, not received, or not recorded by the corporation within applicable deadlines; lacking in captions that conform and agree with the play symbols as appropriate to the particular lottery game involved; or not in compliance with such additional specific regulations and public or confidential validation and security tests of the corporation appropriate to the particular lottery game involved.

The evidence in the record shows clearly that the red circle on Sumner's ticket that resembles the winning symbol was a stray printing mark, known in the trade as a "hickey." According to the director of manufacturing for Scientific Games International, the company that prints GLC's lottery tickets, hickeys occur when a stray piece of material gets on the printing plate and prevents ink from adhering to the spot on the ticket beneath the stray material.

2. Sumner responds that, notwithstanding the statutory limitation on payment for tickets produced in error, the legislature has also provided a means for allowing the GLC to pay prize winnings when a court orders it to do so. The legislature placed restrictions in the Code section as directions to the GLC, but not as binding law on the courts, he argues. Therefore, a court can decide whether Sumner is entitled to prize winnings based on contract law.

According to Sumner, the section that gives the court discretion to order the GLC to pay prize winnings regardless of any other restriction in the Code is OCGA § 50-27-24(c)(1), the last sentence of which provides: "Notwithstanding any other provisions of this Code section, any person, pursuant to an appropriate judicial order, shall be paid the prize to which a winner is entitled." Because the language quoted above does not specify that it applies only to the subsection that contains it, Sumner argues, the legislature intended for the court "to construe the contract notwithstanding the provisions of the Code section."

Faced with an arguably ambiguous legislative enactment, we must try to determine the legislative intent, and "[l]anguage in one part of the statute must be construed in the light of the legislative intent as found in the statute as a whole." (Citations and punctuation omitted.) Alford v. Pub. Svc. Comm., 262 Ga. 386, 387(1)(a), 418 S.E.2d 13 (1992). We give due weight and meaning to all of the words of the statute, and we are "not authorized to disregard any of the words of the statute in question unless the failure to do so would lead to an absurdity manifestly not intended by the legislature." (Citation omitted.) Boyles v. Steine, 224 Ga. 392, 395, 162 S.E.2d 324 (1968); OCGA § 1-3-1(a). A construction that upholds the statute as a whole is preferable. Exum v. City of Valdosta, 246 Ga. 169, 170(1), 269 S.E.2d 441 (1980).

The Georgia Lottery for Education Act, OCGA § 50-27-1 et seq., was enacted "to support improvements and enhancements for educational purposes and programs." OCGA § 50-27-2(1). The legislature further declared that "lottery games shall be operated and managed in a manner which provides continuing entertainment to the public, maximizes revenues, and ensures that the lottery is operated with integrity and dignity." OCGA § 50-27-2(3).

If we were to construe the sentence "any person, pursuant to an appropriate judicial order, shall be paid the prize to which a winner is entitled" as allowing us to ignore the rest of the lottery statute, as Sumner suggests, the rest of the statute would mean nothing. Further, according to the record, more than thirty other Nifty 50s players are seeking to collect $50 per day for five years, or $91,250 each, because their tickets have a printing error. Such unanticipated payments on tickets produced in error would severely reduce GLC revenues and funds for educational programs, an outcome the legislature clearly did not intend.¹

The sentence is more logically construed to apply to the subsection that contains it, which addresses the assignability of prizes and the payment of remaining prizes to a deceased's estate or trust....