After 8 years, woman to get another shot at slot jackpot

California slot machine enthusiast Heather Devon is in Las Vegas to take a gamble this week, but she'll do it in a courtroom instead of a casino.

Devon has waited eight years to tell a judge and jury why she feels she was jilted out of a $97,823 slot machine jackpot at the Frontier Hotel & Casino in November 1991. She gets that chance in Clark County District Court on Monday.

"I can't wait. Let's get on with it," the Orange County schoolteacher said in an interview last week. Devon said she's lost track of how much she has spent in legal fees pursuing her claim.

Persistence isn't new for her. The long dispute started when Devon played the same slot machine for 12 hours. She took no meal breaks, no bathroom breaks. She sat there in front of machine No. 2614 dropping in $1 coins -- three at a time, every time.

Devon's mother went to bed and rose to greet another day in the time Devon played. And when her mother and a casino worker urged her to break for some breakfast, Devon didn't want to go.

She didn't want to leave because she felt a big win was coming. She says the machine already had paid out about $20,000. She was up by $700. At that point she figured every pull could be the one that would drop $97,000 into the tray.

"I never wanted to close down the machine. I refused, even when she (the casino worker) offered 12 times," Devon said. "But she insisted and insisted. We started to walk away, and I turned around to go back. I just didn't feel right about it."

But she kept walking -- out the doors to the Stardust next door for a breakfast she says took about 90 minutes. When she returned, she found Kenneth Brush, of Washington, celebrating a jackpot win on her machine.

"I saw a crowd around the machine. It had already hit," Devon said. "They opened the machine for the man, and the worker had taken a bribe."

Casino employees say that's not how it happened at all, according to signed statements contained in the court records.

They say Devon asked to have the machine locked up, and she was told to be back within an hour. In their written statements employees say Devon was not given a closure slip for her machine when it was locked, even though such slips are common practice when machines are locked.

Locking machines for customers is a legal practice and quite common under some circumstances, said Keith Copher, an investigator with the Nevada State Gaming Control Board.

"If someone is sitting at a bar slot machine and needs to go to the bathroom, they can hold it for him," Copher said. "There's all kinds of reasons for it. Quite often someone will want to eat or go to the bathroom."

Gaming control officials typically receive about one complaint a year from someone who either wanted to play a machine that was locked for another person or from someone who, like Devon, says the machine was unlocked for someone else, he said.

But state gaming officials have no control or jurisdiction over the practice.

"The casino doesn't have to do it. It's a public relations thing," Copher said. "It's not a dispute over winnings. It's a civil matter between (the player) and the casino."

Devon says she didn't know machines could be locked until the casino worker told her about it. She also says no one told her there was a time limit for locking up the machine.

"They're lying. They're lying through their teeth," Devon said.

Stan Johnson, attorney for former Frontier owner Tom Elardi and his company Unbelieveable Inc., did not return phone calls seeking comment on the case. Elardi owned the casino in 1991 but sold it in 1997. Current owners of the New Frontier Hotel & Casino are not involved in the lawsuit. Court records show the machine Devon was playing had a scrambling device that made it impossible to figure out when or whether it would pay off. There is no way to know for sure that Devon would have won the jackpot had she kept playing that machine. That's one of the points Johnson is expected to make.

Cal Potter III, Devon's attorney, says it doesn't matter whether the machine had a scrambler.

"You only win if you're given the opportunity, and she lost the opportunity," Potter said.

Court records also show a copy of a casino receipt showing Brush was paid a $92,823 jackpot, when witnesses say the jackpot was $97,823.

As of Aug. 18, Potter's office was still trying to obtain a copy of the Internal Revenue Service form that showed how much Brush was paid. But in a hearing that day Johnson said they couldn't find the 8-year-old document among the files of a casino that had been sold since the lawsuit was filed.

Devon says she suspects someone at the casino kept the missing $5,000 as a bribe. But her case likely will have to go to trial without that question answered in the form of a document.

Her time is running out.

Devon initially filed her case in federal court but a federal judge ruled in 1993 that it was a matter for the state district level. She filed the current lawsuit in Clark County District Court in 1994, and her five-year statute of limitations expires in November.

The trial has been so long in coming that Devon's original attorney Melvin Belli -- the famed "king of torts" -- has died, along with Devon's mother and brother who made the 1991 trip with her.

Even most of the former Frontier employees have moved out of state, and the jackpot winner is aging and battling cancer in Arizona, Potter said. Most witness testimony likely will be in the form of sworn statements the witnesses made when questioned by attorneys in the case at least a year ago.

Potter said his star witness is to be a former Frontier employee who says he heard the woman who locked up Devon's machine bragging about the $1,000 tip she received from Brush after he won. They are flying the former employee here from Texas, where he now lives.

Potter also said he will provide a casino industry expert who will testify that floor workers often take bribes to open machines that have been locked for other customers.

This case is the first of its kind to Potter's knowledge, and if nothing else it might send a message to the state's most powerful industry that some customers might fight back.

"Her situation is so much different because she'd been playing for so long," Potter said. "It's been so hard to fight the hotels and casinos in this state. We're still scrapping at it after all these years."

Devon said she's not in this for sending a message. She intends to win. And if she doesn't win this one, she will appeal.

"Truth and honesty is going to win and overtake money," Devon said. "If we don't win, I will swear that town is crooked."

Devon still visits Las Vegas to play the slots.

She says she'll play at most any hotel -- except for one.

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