Ultimately, the lawsuit stalled on the question of whether casinos and slot machine suppliers have a “duty of care” to protect patrons from compulsive gambling. Players become addicted to a dissociated mental state of diminished self-awareness and the suspension of a sense of time, money value and one’s immediate surroundings.” “Playing these machines produces in numerous gamblers a trance-like state in which their ability to make rational decisions is eroded. “No other form of gambling is known to manipulate the human mind as much as slot machines,” the lawsuit said. The lawsuit also accused IGT of intentionally concealing from patrons algorithms and other design features that govern slot machines’ win-loss functions - features that have been written about in books such as “Addiction by Design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas” by MIT anthropologist Natasha Dow Schull. “The products were not a passive medium through which gamblers enacted a pre-existing addiction but, rather, an interactive force that eroded players’ capacity to make reasoned decisions,” the lawsuit said. Its main allegation was that the IGT slot machines used at Mountaineer are “inherently dangerous” and are designed to keep people playing to the point where they can’t stop. and former Mountaineer parent company, MTR Gaming Group.

The lawsuit also named as a defendant Reno, Nev.-based slot machine manufacturer International Game Technology Inc. To support his habit, he embezzled more than $7 million from his workplace, where he was chief financial officer, and emptied his family’s savings, retirement account and his children’s college funds, the lawsuit said.Įven after an IRS audit discovered the embezzlement and Stevens was fired, he continued playing the slot machines at Mountaineer for 10 more months, never telling his wife about his secret life as he dragged his family deeper into debt, the lawsuit said.

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