Declaratory Judgment for Client Upheld by Appellate Courts

What happens when you have a million dollar lottery ticket that someone else says is theirs? Unfortunately, for our client, a lot of litigation. Our client, an Alabama resident, purchased a lottery ticket in Dade County in 2015 while coming through the county on business. He forgot about the ticket for a long period and then asked a relative who was traveling to Georgia to check several tickets for him. The relative discovered that the ticket was a million dollar winner, but instead of immediately telling our client, he told another family friend, who instigated a scheme to claim the ticket as hers. After local investigation and an investigation by the Georgia Lottery Commission, the true identity of the owner could not be definitively determined. The Georgia Lottery Commission filed a suit for declaratory judgment to determine who the true owner was and in 2018, a jury decided that our client was, in fact, the true owner. The family friend continued on her campaign to claim the ticket and appealed to the Court of Appeals. The Court of Appeals found no error in the jury’s decision and upheld it. Again not satisfied, she petitioned for the Supreme Court of Georgia to hear the case. Finally, in January 2020, the Supreme Court denied the petition and the Georgia Lottery Commission paid the winnings to our client. We are so happy that after almost five years our client has received his lottery winnings. Although we did not anticipate the case going through some of the timely twists and turns we were happy to see the case to the end.