The title by the judge on the judgment that arose out of this case was a tale of two brothers and $2 million. And my client was someone who was sued by his brother over the purchase of the winning $2 million Florida lottery ticket. And what had happened is my client and his brother actually had presented the winning lottery ticket and received the lump sum payment from that, but then got into a dispute over who actually had control over the funds and whose it was.

So the issue in dispute was who bought the lottery ticket? A challenge in the case was my client’s brother lived right by the store where we knew the winning lottery ticket had been purchased, and his brother had frequented that store on a regular basis, claimed to have played the lottery every week and always purchased it at this store. We didn’t have the benefit of any video surveillance, so it really was a he said, she said sort of case. And the brother paraded a bunch of people who are familiar with his habit of buying a lottery ticket at that store to testify on his behalf that he must have been the one that bought the winning lottery ticket.

As probabilities go the fact that he had gone there many times in the past doesn’t make it any more likely that he bought the winning ticket on that day. And my client’s story was he had gone to visit his brother, and although he typically buys his lottery tickets somewhere else, on that particular day he bought a lottery ticket there. And so both brothers claimed that they played five plays, five sets of numbers every week when they played, and in fact, the winning ticket had five sets of numbers.

So one of the things we did at trial is we put my client’s brother on the stand and we asked him to – and let me back up. Both brothers said they played the same numbers for years and years and years. I think this is common among lottery players. They memorize their numbers. They have their lucky numbers. We knew, because it had been published what the winning number of those five plays were on the ticket. So we asked my client’s brother on the stand, you know, can you tell us what the numbers were that you played on that ticket? And of course he readily recited the five numbers that were the winning lottery ticket numbers.

But then I asked him, to his surprise, to recite for us all of the other plays that he claimed to have made for the past seven years by memory. And he stumbled and he came up with numbers that appeared as if he was guessing, and of course they didn’t match all of the plays on that lottery ticket. What my client, who was prepared had in fact played those tickets and could easily recite under direct examination that he had played all those numbers. And I think it significantly impacted the credibility of my client’s brother, which really was what the issue of this case was about. And the outcome was favorable to my client and it was determined he was the one that had purchased the ticket. So that was an interesting case. An unfortunate case the two brothers were disputing over money like that, but a good outcome for our client.