Ballin v. Los Angeles County Fair

SHAW, P. J.

This action was commenced by plaintiff in the Municipal Court of the City of Los Angeles and upon proceedings which are not here questioned, and which we therefore assume to have been proper, was transferred to the justice’s court from which this appeal is taken. The justice’s court sustained a demurrer to the complaint with leave to amend and, no amendment having been made, a judgment of dismissal was entered, from which the plaintiff appeals.

This appeal requires us to construe section 14 of the Act of 1933 regulating horse racing (Stats. 1933, p. 2046; Peering ’s Gen. Laws, 1937 ed., Act 3421). This act authorizes wagering upon horse races, provided the wagers are made within the enclosure of a licensed race track and by “the pari mutuel or mutual method of -wagering” (secs. 3, 8, 14) ; and section 14 provides that the “commission deducted by any licensee from pari mutuel pools shall not exceed eight percent (in addition to which 4 per cent is paid to the state for a license. Sec. 12) of the gross amount of money handled, and the odd cents of all redistributions to be made on all mutual contributions exceeding a sum equal to the next lowest multiple of ten”. The provision in question here is that underlined.

In his complaint plaintiff recounts the story of a visit made by him to a licensed horse racing track operated by

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the defendant, during which he made a wager on a certain horse under the pari mutuel system of wagering carried on there by defendant. This proved to be a winning wager, but when the time for payment arrived plaintiff and defendant disagreed as to the amount to which plaintiff was entitled. Plaintiff wagered $2, and the winnings thereof were $0,879 for each dollar or a total of $1,758, before making any deduction for odd cents, sometimes called “breakage”. Plaintiff’s claim is that he was entitled to $1.70, being these total winnings less $0,058 as the odd cent (or “breakage”) deduction, and to the return of his wager, making the total of $3.70, which he demanded. The defendant deducted $0,079 for odd cents (or “breakage”) from the winnings of each dollar wagered by plaintiff, leaving $0.80 as the amount due plaintiff on each dollar wagered by him, and tendered him twice this amount, or $1.60, plus his original wager, making the total sum of $3.60.

We conclude that plaintiff is right and defendant is wrong in construing the statute. It authorizes the deduction of the odd cents ‘1 of all redistributions to be made on all mutual contributions” only. This language uses words not commonly applied to such a subject matter; but considering it in the light of the remainder of the act and in view of what goes on under the pari mutuel system of wagering, we can plainly see that “contributions” are the bets or wagers made and “redistributions” are the sums to be paid to the several winners as winnings. There is no warrant in these words for dividing a wager (“contribution”) or winnings (“redistribution”) into fractions of any size and deducting odd cents for each fraction separately. The amount to be returned on any winning wager must be considered as a whole, and the odd cents deduction must be made accordingly and can be taken only once for any such wager. Substantially the same question has arisen in Massachusetts under the law of that state authorizing pari mutuel betting, and the Supreme Court of that state has decided it in accordance with the views above expressed.