Matthew Guest

A gardener’s iPad showed she’d won £1.1 MILLION on a Paddy Power game. They paid her £20,265.14 and said the screen was wrong. Four and a half years later, a High Court judge ruled the screen was right. – Corrine Durber was a gardener from Gloucestershire, England. – In October 2020 she was playing a Paddy Power game called Wild Hatter on her iPad. It combines a fruit machine with a wheel-of-fortune bonus round. – She won the first stage, moved to the next level, and spun the jackpot wheel. – The screen showed the “Monster Jackpot” of £1,097,132.71. – She took a screenshot. – Paddy Power paid her £20,265.14, the amount for the smaller “Daily Jackpot,” and gave no explanation. – She complained to the company the same evening. – Paddy Power said a programming error had made the screen show the wrong prize. Its random number generator, it said, had only selected the Daily Jackpot. – Its terms and conditions said the generator’s result was final and that it wasn’t liable for system errors. – That was the whole problem. Paddy Power wrote the game, ran the software that picked the result, wrote the rules, and then decided which number counted when its own screen disagreed with its own system. – A prediction market doesn’t work that way. There’s no house writing the game or choosing the result afterward. – You trade against another person at a price someone actually agreed to, and your payout comes from the person on the other side, not from a company deciding the number on your screen was a mistake. – She sued for breach of contract. – In March 2025, Mr Justice Ritchie granted summary judgment in her favor, so there was no full trial. – His 62-page ruling found that human error in mapping the game’s software caused the on-screen result to differ from the generator’s. It affected 14 plays over 48 days. – The judge said customers expect the house to pay if they bet on number 13 and the ball lands on 13. – He found the terms unfair and unenforceable under the Consumer Rights Act 2015, and not part of her contract. – He also said it was unfair to place all the risk on the consumer for the company’s own errors, negligence, and inadequate testing. – She said the judge confirmed she had “fairly and squarely won £1 MILLION.” – She said Paddy Power had “tried their very best to deny me my rightful winnings.” – She said she would never bet with them again. A gardener hit £1.1 MILLION on her iPad, was paid £20,000 instead, and spent four and a half years in court proving the screen was right.