Long-time Loto-Quebec player sues for not understanding long odds

A lottery player in Canada who has been purchasing weekly tickets for more than two decades didn’t realize that she didn’t have good odds of winning. Martha Karas believed that Loto-Quebec did a poor job explaining the odds, so she did what anyone desperate to win millions of dollars would due – she sued the lottery.

Karas has been purchasing tickets to Loto-Quebec’s 6/49 and Lotto Max games for more than 20 years, according to court documents. However, she believed that the odds of winning were around five million-to-one, per her argument, and not the 14 million-to-one (6/49) or 28.6 million-to-one (Lotto Max) they actually are.

Karas sued for $112 million in punitive damages, as well as all profits generated by the game for everyone who had played it since July 2013, asserting that Loto-Quebec never informed the public of the actual odds. Her case actually made it as far as the Quebec Superior Court in 2017 before being rejected.

Not content with the court’s ruling, Karas tried again and pushed her luck further. Last week, Quebec’s Court of Appeal tossed the case, just like the Superior Court had done two years ago.