A hearing was held on GTECH Corporation’s First Amended Plea to the Jurisdiction on Friday, December 4th in a lawsuit styled “Nettles v. GTECH”. The lawsuit is pending in the 160th Judicial District Court in Dallas County, Texas. The plaintiff in that lawsuit is one of approximately 1,000 lottery players who have sued GTECH, the operator of the Texas Lottery. The players allege that GTECH provided deceptive and misleading Fun 5’s scratch-off tickets to the Texas Lottery which in turn sold the deceptive tickets to Texas lottery players in September and October of 2014.
In its Plea to the Jurisdiction, GTECH alleges that it is entitled to “derivative immunity” and cannot be sued for fraud because it was merely doing what the Texas Lottery Commission ordered it to do. In response, the Plaintiff in that suit filed her Response to GTECH’s 1st Amended Plea to the Jurisdiction in which she argued that GTECH is not entitled to derivative immunity because it exercised “independent discretion” when it chose the wording of the tickets that it sold to the Lottery Commission.
The Court has not yet ruled on GTECH’s Plea but is expected to do so in the coming week.