Lottery Winner Must Share $1.7 Million Jackpot With Psychic Waiter

[doxydad]

In a legal ruling no one could have predicted, a judge in England has ordered a lottery winner to split his jackpot with the waiter who predicted the win.

The case revolves around Fatih Ozcan, a waiter at the Kapadokya Turkish restaurant in York, who decided to buy a lottery ticket after dreaming he was showing a bunch of cash to his manager, Hayati Kucukkoylu.

The next day, Ozcan pestered his boss to buy EuroMillions lottery tickets from a nearby supermarket, the Metro reports.

Amazingly, Ozcan's dream was prophetic -- one of the tickets earned a jackpot worth $1.7 million.

Although Kucukkoylu paid for the ticket and chose the winning numbers, Ozcan believed he was entitled to half of the winnings because he physically purchased the tickets after dreaming of the win.

But the dream became a nightmare after Kucukkoylu insisted the winnings were his alone, according to the Express.

Judge Mark Gosnell ruled on behalf of Ozcan, saying that because the plaintiff was "a strong believer in the power of dreams, he interpreted his own dream to mean that he and Mr. Kucukkoylu would win the lottery," he said according to UPI.com.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/15/fatih-ozcan_n_5588340.html

[CBGLuthier]

1. Wow, I did not know UK judges were as loony as US judges.

Wait, I had a dream I was the queen of England so move over Betsy.

[Sweet Freedom]

2. Sounds okay to me

The fact that Ozcan pestered Kucukkoylu for three hours about the ticket and that surveillance film showed them picking out the numbers also affected the judge's decision.

"I find that the effect of these conversations was that Mr. Kucukkoylu and Mr. Ozcan entered into a contract to jointly play the lottery on an equal basis," Gosnell said.

Boss sounds like a selfish greedy jerk. If I bought a lottery ticket only at someone else's insistence, then my response would be, "THANK YOU!" and I'd be more than happy to share half of the money I didn't have yesterday.

[LisaL]

3. Why didn't this guy buy his own ticket, or at least split the cost?

I wouldn't award him anything.

[Sweet Freedom]

4. Because in his dream the boss

gave him the money. The employee bugged him for hours to buy the ticket. The boss wouldn't have bought the ticket otherwise.

[LisaL]

5. So if I bug you for hours to buy something, and you then buy it, I should own half of it even though

I didn't pay for it? I just don't follow this logic.

[Sweet Freedom]

6. I'm not trying to convince you otherwise.

If somebody bugged me for hours to buy a lottery ticket I had no intention of buying and I won, I wouldn't think twice about sharing my good fortune with them.

You wouldn't, which makes no difference to me because it will never happen to us.

[Tribalceltic]

7. Simply this

The Judge decided after viewing the two of them working on picking the numbers, that they had struck a contract to split the money if there was a win.

Your scenario would then be;
LadyFreedom talks you in to buying lottery tickets and helps you pick the numbers, you agreed during that time to split the winnings.

The Judge is just enforcing a verbal contract, backed up by video tape.