Gulfstream Park and Casino in Hallandale, Florida is facing a legal challenge from a player who said the casino owes her a car. In a recent promotion, Gulfstream Park and Casino mailed out 150,000 keys to a Range Rover Sport vehicle. Five of those keys were said to open a lock box, and the first holder of one of those winning keys to come into the casino and open the box would win the car.
Vicki Wersching of Aventura said she received a key in the mail on August 8th and took it to the casino that day. “I take the key, I put it in the lockbox, I try one way, I try the other way, I pushed it all the way in, turned it, opened the door and a siren went off and I said, ‘Did I just win a car?’” Wersching said the manager was called. “The manager said, ‘I have to go look at the videotape,’ and he came back about 20 minutes later and said I didn’t win the car because I ‘jiggled the key.’ I said to him, I said, ‘I jiggle the key when I open the door to my house!’’” Wersching said in a recent television news interview.
Wersching hired attorney David Kubilium who said Gulfstream told him it knew who received the five winning keys when they were mailed out, and Wersching was not one of them. “Maybe five keys they knew would win, but clearly I must have had the sixth, because mine opened it,” she said.
Gulfstream executive Guy Lee wrote in an email to Wersching that she turned the key too firmly. “This is an obvious flaw in the construction of the box, and we did not envision any rough handling of it. We have requested a stronger, more sturdy box so this does not happen again,” he wrote.
Kubilium said Wersching is a retired, 30-year veteran public school teacher, “not a locksmith or a weight lifter. They’ve admitted to liability here, that the box was defective. That’s not my client’s problem that the box was defective.” Wersching said she wants the casino to give her the car or a cash equivalent and to pay her attorney’s fees.
