In about as much time as it takes to scratch an instant lottery ticket, son can turn on father, best friend become no friend and loyal worker become ex-employee.
Some Illinois lottery tickets, it seems, have not only been charmed but also cursed.
On July 31, Carol Stonecipher and John Warford stood on opposite sides of a convenience store counter in Kane County as Stonecipher bought a ticket with the winning numbers in an $11 million Lotto drawing held later that night.
On Friday, they will be on opposite sides of a Chicago courtroom as Warford pursues what he claims is rightly his-specifically, five-sixths of the prize that he says he won fair and square by buying the tickets he inadvertently produced for Stonecipher. They also were winners.
And Warford’s employer, Bell Fuels Inc., has made a claim for five-sixths of the money as well, saying it is the rightful owner of the five tickets Warford created by mistake.
Now Stonecipher, Warford and Bell Fuels will be playing a new set of numbers: 93 CH 7095. That’s their case number in Cook County Circuit Court, one of two courts, so far, where they will pursue their claims.
A look at the other lawsuits involving Illinois lottery tickets shows that each had a different set of circumstances and, perhaps, a different moral lesson.
Suits are relatively rare. A search of legal databases, plus information supplied by the Illinois Lottery Commission, shows that there have been more than a dozen suits.
On the other hand, the Illinois State Lottery claims to have created more than 750 millionaires in the state since it began in 1974.
“Considering the sheer number of winners over the years and the fact that we have had some significant prizes, you would think there would have been more disputes than a dozen or so,” said Vincent Lavieri, whose firm has regularly represented lottery winners trying to avoid an ugly tussle with a family member or the government.
The tales of woe are varied, but the fiscal lesson is always the same: If you buy a lottery ticket with a friend, a relative or a lover, treat the $1 deal as if it’s a billion-dollar corporate takeover.
“My advice to all these people who get into pools is to get it in writing, even if it’s only a napkin with a bunch of names on it,” said William Mantas, an attorney who successfully sued earlier this year on behalf of a bakery employee to get a share of a $6 million jackpot.
Mantas’ client was Mathew Pallisard, who along with a couple of his buddies in the mechanic shop at the National Baking Co. in Chicago, thought nothing of throwing a couple of bucks into a pool to buy a few lottery tickets.
But when the pocket change took on the value of Kruggerands after the co-workers won the big one, everything changed. And Pallisard, who thought he was a loyal member of the pool, instead became persona non grata.
When the other seven claimed ignorance about his membership, Pallisard sued and won.
Pallisard may have emerged on top, but it came at a cost. Men he considered his friends no longer talk to him, and Pallisard eventually left the bakery for another job.
In the meantime, the first check did arrive-$37,500 minus taxes-in late spring. The second one is due at the end of the month.
He’s already decided what to do with the first couple of checks. They will go directly to pay his attorneys.
“It was all extremely tough,” Pallisard said. “You’re working with seven people and suddenly they’re fighting you tooth and nail, that’s tough. There’s no doubt in my mind that money does funny things to people.”
If the suits are rare, they can also be costly.
“Our bottom line is that we want to see the money go to the rightful winner,” said lottery spokesman Mike Lang. “If it takes the courts to do that, so be it.”
There are other, incalculable costs, sometimes paid in bad blood. In at least one case, the courts were asked to settle a dispute that pitted father against son, sister against brother.
In 1983, William Shelby, a professional singer, won $2.3 million, a prize that worked out to $115,000 a year. At the time, the newspapers were filled with pictures of a beaming Shelby surrounded by his family, who appeared to be equally content.
But one of those Shelbys apparently had a change of heart, because three years later son Julio sued his father. Julio, who accused his father of “high living” and being a man who couldn’t be trusted with money, claimed his father would have been lost without him because it was Julio who picked the numbers based on his brother’s birth date.
To back up his claim to the winnings, Julio also produced an agreement signed by six members of the family in which the elder Shelby agreed to share his good fortune with the family. It all seemed legal, except that William Shelby and his wife and daughter claimed their signatures on the document were forgeries.
The dispute was settled last year, though William’s attorney, Steven Rosenberg, declined to discusss the specifics.
The Shelbys, however, haven’t cornered the market on bad blood. Take the hapless case of Richard Yurko, the contractor who saw a $100,000 prize dwindle away to almost nothing before he even had a chance to spend a cent.
His error: enlisting a couple of pairs of reputedly lucky hands to help him scratch off the tickets.
His tale of woe began on a day in November 1989, when Yurko made one of his regular stops at the Hitching-A-Ride service station and coffee shop in Burlington in Kane County.
Yurko began scratching the film off the tickets and when he won some more tickets in the process, consented to allow the owner and two other women who were in the restaurant to help him. One of them, Judy Fitchie, is described in court papers as the lucky one.
One of the tickets qualified the bearer to appear on the Lottery’s television show in March 1990 with a chance at big prizes. Yurko appeared and won, $100,000 to be exact. The problem was he wanted to keep the money all to himself.
Fitchie and the other two women sued, and won, getting three-quarters of the pot. Yurko, the court said, had in essence set up a partnership with the women when he agreed to let them help him scratch the tickets, and they were entitled to share the money.
The fatal piece of evidence was the winning ticket, in which Yurko wrote on the back on a designated line his name as well as the initials of the three women.
To make matters worse, Yurko’s wife made a claim on the money in a divorce suit she filed against him, leaving him with only a small portion of the $100,000.
Not every case is so tragic for the would-be winner. Frieda Procido of Elmwood Park in 1989 sued her lifelong friend Philip Sylvester, then a police officer in the suburb, claiming that four years earlier he had picked up a lottery ticket she dropped on the floor of a bakery and refused to return it. The ticket turned out to be good for a $6 million jackpot.
In August 1992, a judge in Du Page County dismissed the case, ruling that there was no factual basis for Procido’s claim. While Procido has appealed the decision, Sylvester’s attorney, Stephen Culliton, has filed a motion asking that she pay Sylvester’s legal bills, amounting to $70,190.
