Two video lottery terminal (VLT) users have cleared a hurdle in their legal fight against the Atlantic Lottery Corporation (ALC) over practices that they claimed are deceptive, dangerous and illegal.

The legal battle dates back to 20017, when lead plaintiff Douglas Babstock and Fred Small filed a lawsuit accusing ALC of designing its VLT line of games to be deceptive. In the lawsuit, Babstock said the machines—which he started using in the late 1990s—“gradually sucked away his money” and took over his life.

To have the lawsuit certified, the group’s lawyers dug deep into the past and found a more than 300-year-old act, known as the Statute of Anne, 1710, or the Gaming Act, which allows those who have lost money in gambling to sue for recover three times the value of the money they lost.

On Tuesday, Supreme Court of Newfoundland and Labrador Justice Alphonsus Faour certified the lawsuit after he said Babstock and his group persuaded him “that their conceptualization of this case is workable.”