Ho Chi Minh City People’s Court has agreed to hear an appeal by the owner of the Sheraton Saigon Hotel against a trial court’s award of .5 million to a slot player who won the money when a machine malfunctioned.
The lower court ruling, issued a year ago, dismissed Dai Duong Joint Venture Company’s claim that the win was invalid despite technical evidence provided by the company showing the machine had malfunctioned. The court instead found for 61-year-old Ly Sam, a Vietnamese-American, on the grounds that the winning amount was displayed on the machine’s screen and the machine had issued no “error report”.
Sam sued Dai Duong after the company initially agreed to pay him only the equivalent of US$300, the amount he spent gambling at the casino, in accordance with Vietnamese regulations requiring operators to refund players for technical problems.
