I can see them having to pay up. It's quite simple...stores and other companies have to give you the price on the shelf, even if it is a "misprint." I see nothing different here. If they made a genuine mistake, then it is a 250K mistake that they need to own up to....do what is right.
I would have thought that any state lottery would put serial numbers on its tickets so that it can cross verify the scratch off numbers that are supposed to be upon any given submitted ticket. This sounds so crude. Why would a machine print first an unreadable 22, then a legible 2? How about other tickets that supposed to have 22 in that position, did they have the same problem?
Oh, but it's probably not that simple. The "State" would probably demand that the printing company pay for their "mistake." Which would simply NOT be acceptable because the printing company is probably owned by the brother (cousin, in-law...insert applicable relative here) of some lottery official.
Here is the rub. If it is genuine misprint, then nobody relied on it. Unlike a price tag misprint where somebody relies on the printed price. This was under the scratch off, so it was merely the area to determine if she won. She lost nothing by their error. She never saw the error, so she clearly never relied on it to make her decision to purchase the ticket. It was a misprint, and cost her nothing but Adrenalin. What are her damages? How has she been damaged?
Florida does not have to pay up. The ticket was not misleading to the purchaser, except in as much as all scratcher tickets are misleading to the purchaser. They win based on the control code printed on them. The scratched portion merely indicates to the consumer whether or not the control code indicates the ticket is a winner. For instance, you could take your tickets back to the lottery agency for verification without even bothering to scratch them.
No tickee, no shirtee. If the control code doesn't match, the ticket is a loser.