Piqua lottery winners sued by co-workers

www.daytondailynews.com ^ | 12-23-2008 | By Nancy Bowman

[siphon101]

“Per the Statute of Frauds, all agreements in excess of $500 must be in writing to be enforceable.”

Technically incorrect. The Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) provision you are refering to requires that a contract for the SALE OF GOODS in excess of $500 must be in writing to be enforceable. Here there was no sale of goods to, or from, the parties involved. The only actual SALE constituted the lottery tickets, and that wasn’t a sale from them, and the lottery tickets themselves were probably worth less than $500.

Rather, what we likely have here, in a very lose sense, is an oral agreement to form a limited partnership to pool resources for the purposes of engaging in, essentially, high risk investment/legalized gambling.

Because this agreement was for an unfixed and indeterminant duration, rather than the “in excess of one year” as required by the Statute of Frauds, an oral agreement may be sufficient. More to point, if it is true that their portion of the previous weeks winnings had not been distributed to them, but had essentially been “pooled back” into the partnership fund to continue with its activities, then they actually have a fairly reasonable argument that they paid into the partnership, as per the oral agreement, and are owed their due.

[OrioleFan]

And the winner is: ..... the lawyers!

[az.b1bbomberfxr]

And under Obama’s “Wealth Redistribution” policy, they’ll probably win.

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

Seems to me the equitable resolution would be to give the four plaintiffs their share of the winnings from the Dec. 9th drawing...whatever amount that may have been. That would fulfill the terms of the original oral contract.
Because they were not in the office and unable to contribute to the purchase of tickets for the Dec. 12th drawing, they should not be eligible to share in the winnings of that drawing. The winners were under no obligation to seek them out to get their contribution for the purchase of tickets for the winning drawing on the 12th. That's my ruling as the Honorable Judge Bloody Sam Roberts.

Now, having said that, if I were one of the winners of the drawing on the 12th, I'd be inclined to offer each of the plaintiffs a very large sum in order to settle the dispute out of court...depending of course on how much my share was. If my share came out to anything like double digit millions, I'd offer them each a million and ask them, "Can't we just make this go away? I mean...it's a million bucks."

[Red Badger]

Million bucks?......Deal or No Deal?............Hmmmmm.........

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

Actually, I did the rough math. The 15 defendants, after taxes would have gotten about $8.9 million each. Less if there were more players. The $41 million amount being sought is ridiculous. And at $8.9 million...I'd still contribute $4 million to make them go away. I could do quite nicely on $4.9 million myself.

The gotcha for them, if they took it would be that they'd have to pay taxes on the $1 million I'd give them. Tough noogies. Deal or No Deal, indeed.

[RobinOfKingston]

Nothing breaks up a good friendship quite like money.

[Red Badger]

1 Timothy 6:10
For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.

[Pilsner]

And the winner is: ..... the lawyers!

I love a story with a happy ending.

[GreenLanternCorps]

The pool was sloppy in how they handled the money.

I’m in a lottery pool at work. Each month we pay $1.00 per drawing for that month (8 or 9 dollars a month per player). The membership does fluctuate so if we have winnings in a month that a used to buy additional tickets, those are purchased and tracked separately based on the previous months group.

[OrioleFan]

Must be a lawyer...