Lottery loser sues for share

I have the news on in the background. They just had a sit-down with a member of an office lottery pool. Some employees of a company played the lottery every week. They finally won. Now a cow-orker is suing them for a share because he had always been part of the lottery pool, but was not in the office when they collected for the winning ticket. (He was off that day.) He says that he deserves a share because of all of the times he joined the pool and didn’t win, but had to pay anyway.

I used to be in a lottery pool. If someone was gone, he or she would give his or her money to someone else to be included in the pool. If the person didn’t fork over his share, it was his own look out. Sometimes someone would cover for the missing person (who would pay later), and sometimes not. The tickets would be photocopied and distributed before the drawing. But if the person did not make prior arrangements to be in the pool, too bad if we won.

I can understand why the guy in this case is upset. But he doesn’t deserve a dime. Hey, I’ve been to Vegas a lot of times. Occasionally I’ve given some money to friends to place a bet for me. If they went, and I didn’t give them any money, would I deserve a share of their winnings if they hit it big? Of course not. The guy is a schmuck.

PS: I’m fully aware that lotteries are taxes on people who are poor at math. But I play occasionally anyway.

What a dumbass. Hope he gets an expensive lawyer.

It is possible that other weeks he was out and the lottery was collected, someone put up his dollar and then asked him to pay back when he was back.

(This happens where I work)

If true than he has a legitimate complaint and maybe a case but I leave that for the Lawyers on the board.

Jim

This is the reason why workplace lottery syndicate need to put on paper what the rules are. They need to sign this and keep it safe. It can be used to show what the rules were as once money is involved these things get very ugly very quickly.

He may be in the right he may be in the wrong we’ll never know. It’s just his word against the others.

No lawyer, me. But I believe the plaintiff must win by preponderance of the evidence. The woman interviewed on CNN said that he did not play every time. She may have said that people hadn’t ‘covered’ for him. It would be up to the plaintiff to show proof that A) he was a regular player with the pool, and B) that people had covered for him regularly in the past. The way I see it, ‘If you didn’t pay, you didn’t play.’

Sounds like an O. Henry story. People get silly around money.

More than that. The plaintiff must have a cause of action; that is, he must have a right to relief under the law. I guess his claim would be that there was an oral contract, established by their initial agreement, and confirmed by subsequent performance. But if the subsequent performance wasn’t uniform (some weeks when he was gone, they’d buy for him, other weeks they wouldn’t; sometimes he’d leave money, or they’d only buy him in if he left money), he’s SOL.

Not enough facts here to know, but I suspect he’s just trying to force a quickie settlement. But, yeah, money makes people weird.

As always, we don’t know the full story, and without knowing it, it is hard to judge.
If he didn’t play every week, he is just being a jerk.
If he played every week and was covered when missing, the co-workers are being bigger jerks.

Jim

Ah crap.

Upon reading preview, what JR said.

We do a check pool here at work- everyone gets paid the 15th and 30th. Yesterday, there was a winner with four 7’s. As he’s getting paid, one of the people that usually collects and runs the pool, but was out yesterday called in and had her daughter open and check her pay stub. Five 7’s.

Major hissy fit over whether she “should have” won or not. The powers that be (not me, I stay out of non-work related decisions, I could care less what you all serve at the Union Christmas party, ya know?) decided that she did not win. Especially given the fact that her own daughter works here and had the chance all morning to put her mom’s $2 in but didn’t.

IF that’s the case, then I agree. He may not have a legal standing on this, but his coworkers would do well to include him. Fewer hurt feelings that way.

If he played every week he was in, then I’d split the cash with him. Geesh.

Is this the case being discussed here?

According to the folks who won:

If that’s true, then he has no claim, in my opinion.

Although i love the last sentence of the article, which quotes one of the winners:

Yeah, lady, you’re a peach.

Two very different stories. Seven against one, if he doesn’t have some sort of Email or Paper trail, I would say he’s out of luck.
I will tend to believe the 7 co-workers as that is a lot for a conspiracy against him.
Sounds like he is indeed a jerk.

What’s a check pool?

I have a feeling the bosses are going to be banning lottery pools after this.

No shit. Inter office lawsuits are a great morale builder.

Lottery pools always seemed like a really stupid idea to me. Your chances are arguably not much different (10 times nearly nothing is still nearly nothing), but your winnings are slashed dramatically.

After an office lottery pool hit once, a few of the people where I work decided they needed to start one. Maybe 15 or so in the pool, and they would sometimes hit $3. They kept at it for a while, but it fell apart when the riches didn’t come rolling in. The final straw came when the guy who was running it (he also managed the Coke and candy machine) won a small jackpot on a personal lottery ticket. They just knew he had scammed them, even though the pool tickets were photocopied and distributed before the drawing. Yeah, he knew his was going to win.

This strikes me as one of those stories that could be very easily distorted by the news; there are certainly conceivable circumstances in which he had reason to consider himself in on the pool.

If it’s anything like the ones I’ve heard of, that’s when you bet on certain serial numbers on the check (that little number in the upper right hand corner), either whoever has the most of a certain number (in this case, seven), or you add up all the numbers in the serial and the highest one wins. This works best with checks that have really high serials, like the ones I got at Walmart that had six or seven numbers on them. I think the company I worked for last winter (coincidentally, a bus/taxi company) did this, although I didn’t do it because you had to pay in.

I agree that it’s probably just TS for this guy, but there’s always the chance that he did give someone a dollar and they’re just lying so they can have a bigger slice of the pie. More reason to write up the rules in advance and maybe get signatures on IOUs and all that.