Terms and Conditions: Don’t Make It A Lottery

If you’re a business with a consumer-facing website, you might find it a challenge ensuring your terms and conditions (T&Cs) are fit purpose. However, diligent businesses who keep their online T&Cs under review are protecting themselves and website visitors, which includes potential customers.  The award-winning commercial lawyers at ParrisWhittaker are experienced in advising and representing businesses in Jamaica on contractual issues including those relating to their websites.

Your T&Cs are an important (if uninteresting) part of your offering: they set out the legal rights and obligations between your business and website visitors. The visitor uses your website subject to the T&Cs you’ve displayed and they’ve accepted.

How detailed your T&Cs should be depends on the nature of your business. Where there is a lack of clarity on important issues, an aggrieved consumer could succeed in claiming that certain T&Cs are unenforceable. In a reassuring ruling for businesses, the UK courts recently decided that its National Lottery operator’s T&Cs were adequate and rejected a player’s claim for major ‘winnings’.

The ruling is a timely reminder for businesses to check their online T&Cs are adequate and effective. It was handed down by the High Court in the UK and has persuasive effect on the courts in Jamaica, The Bahamas and other common law jurisdictions.

What happened in this case?

The essence of the case¹ was that a lottery player claimed to have won £1 million and the lottery operator Camelot said she hadn’t and that there was a technical error. The court sided with Camelot.  The game in question involved the Interactive Instant Win Games played online on the National Lottery website.

When the claimant opened her lottery account back in 2009, she had to tick a box confirming agreement with the game rules (which were accessible via various hyperlinks or drop-down menus). When notified of subsequent changes, players are required to tick acceptance of significant changes.

In 2015 the claimant purchased a £5 ticket.  To make a win, the player had to match a number in the ‘YOUR NUMBERS’ section of the screen with a number in the ‘WINNING NUMBERS’ section. The claimant clicked on all five WINNING NUMBERS and all 15 of YOUR NUMBERS.

An animation on screen with a flashing number indicated she had won a £10 prize – but on a closer look the claimant saw she had also matched the number 1 – carrying a £1 million prize. However, no message was displayed saying she had won £1 million; nor was there a flashing number. Camelot said a coding issue had generated an error in the software.

Camelot defended the player’s claim for the £1m prize, relying particularly on its T&Cs of play – which included a stipulation that a player can win only one prize per play.

The judge helpfully observed the nature of current business practice: “One company… requires the consumer to scroll through the Terms and Conditions before clicking the relevant ‘accept’ box; others adopt the same mechanism as [Camelot], although there is considerable variation as to the steps a supplier may take to give appropriate prominence to all or any of these terms.”

The court considered Camelot’s T&Cs in details and did not find anything onerous or unusual about its contractual provisions; nor were they unfair under the UK’s unfair contract terms legislation. Also, the game rules were clearly drafted and logically set out. Headings were “reasonably prominent” and the T&Cs were sufficiently incorporated via the hyperlinks and drop-down menus. Therefore, it was the claimant’s decision whether she wanted to play or not on the basis of the rules.

The stipulation that players could only win one prize in each play was reasonable and commonplace.

Key takeaway

Contract terms should always be carefully thought through and drafted. A business’s online T&Cs should be considered no less important than contracts governing specific commercial relationships.

So long as the online terms on which you rely are clearly displayed and unambiguous, there is minimal risk of a dispute arising. It is prudent to review your T&Cs regularly, but if in any doubt about their effectiveness, speak to the experienced commercial solicitors at ParrisWhittaker for expert legal guidance. Contact us at  info@parriswhittaker.com or +1.242.352.6112

¹Parker-Grennan v. Camelot UK Lotteries Limited [2023] EWHC 800 (KB)