Perhaps instead we can just rely on the plain meaning of common language around "lifetime" income streams and sweepstakes companies that offer those kinds of prizes should be required to purchase an annuity to guarantee that payment.
Relevant: “Federal court filings and interviews suggest the company once shielded prize winners from financial risk by purchasing prepaid annuities through banks or insurance companies. That practice ended sometime after 2003, said Darrell Lester, a retired Publishers Clearing House senior executive and author of a book about the company.”
Agreed, feels like the company should have been and should be now required to purchase an annuity or other similar product that protects the winners.
I wonder what happened in 2003. Probably the company’s fortunes were already faltering.
Also the business was probably becoming obsolete at that point. The internet brought easier access to magazine content, magazine subscriptions signups, and sweepstakes. I remember there being a pretty big sweepstakes forum community at that point.
It also seems like the most lucrative customers may have been using the sweepstakes as a form of gambling, and gambling options have just steadily expanded for decades.
“lifetime” and “unlimited” in any marketing copy should automatically convey legally binding contract language that dominates any explicit language to the contrary and carry forward to successors. Unless they actually mean “lifetime” and “unlimited”, companies should treat those words as radioactive.
I always found it funny when a "lifetime warranty" was retroactively defined to be the lifetime of the product in question. So the warranty expires when the company decides it should expire.
