DENVER — The only thing LaVonne Watkins buys at a convenience store these days is a cold soda on a hot day.
She doesn't touch the scratch-off instant lottery tickets, which she used to snap up weekly in the hope of winning $10,000. Watkins, 35, a home-care provider, stopped buying them years ago when she learned that she had purchased Luck of the Zodiac tickets two months after the top prizes were won -- meaning that while she forked over her money, her chance at the grand prize was zero.
"I thought I was purchasing a fair chance to win," said the Colorado Springs woman, who is pursuing a lawsuit aimed at ending the lottery's practice.
Colorado is not the only state to face such a challenge in recent years. Indiana lottery officials recently ordered retailers to stop selling scratch-off tickets for games in which the top prizes already had been won -- a move that came shortly after a $20-million lawsuit against the lottery received class-action status.
Virginia last year changed its policy after a business professor sued the state lottery for $85 million, claiming he had been defrauded because he had no chance to win a top prize. Texas took similar measures after a state senator introduced a bill to end the practice.
Of the country's 42 state lotteries, about half continue to sell scratch-off tickets after the largest prizes are gone.
"The issue is: How long do you leave a ticket in the marketplace, knowing there may not be a top prize left but loads and loads of lower-tier prizes?" said David Gale, executive director of the North American Assn. of State and Provincial Lotteries, which doesn't take a position on the issue.
Massachusetts' answer to that question is: not at all. As soon as the top prizes are won, the State Lottery Commission ends the game and tells retailers to stop selling tickets.
"This is the appropriate thing to do," said spokeswoman Lisa McDonald. After all, she said, people play for the chance to win the big money, and selling tickets when that chance is gone would be misleading.
When the issue arose in California in 2001, lottery officials responded by running a special $1-million lottery for people who had played instant-win games for which tickets were sold even though their top prizes had already been won.
The state now ends scratch-off games when the last top prize is awarded.
