LONG BEACH, Calif. -- A Mobil-branded convenience store and the California State Lottery Commission face a curious lawsuit from a lottery winner who was denied his payoff.
Ward Thomas sent his 16-year-old son Benjamin to the Long Beach Mobil in October 2016 to trade in 12 winning “Deluxe 7s” California State Lottery Scratchers worth $330. The clerk gave the teenager five $20 scratch-off tickets and the remaining $230 in cash.
Thomas and his son played the tickets and with a “100X the Money” ticket found a $5 million winning ticket. Thomas, not his son, reportedly validated the winning ticket at a 7-Eleven that night and did so again the next day at the state’s Lottery District Office in Santa Ana, Calif.
Soon after, the commission informed Thomas that he was the winner of the $5 million prize. But weeks later, on Dec 5., the commission denied Thomas’ claim, saying the ticket was bought by the ineligible 16-year-old son and was therefore invalid. Only those age 18 and over can legally play the lottery in California.
"We've been honest with the lottery about how things transpired," Thomas said in a press release from his legal team. "The California Lottery led us to believe that we had won for several weeks by congratulating us by phone several times. Then we received a brief note almost two months later denying our claim, and they refused to speak to me by phone after that. It's not fair that the lottery exchanged our tickets, but refuses to honor them when we won a larger sum of money."
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Thomas filed a lawsuit through Greene Broillet and Wheeler LLP, a personal-injury law firm based in Santa Monica, Calif. The lawsuit claims that there is no signage in the Mobil c-store to inform customers that they must be 18 years or older to purchase California State Lottery Scratchers tickets. Thomas has also said that the store did not verify his son’s age before allowing him to obtain the tickets.
The lawsuit also claims that Thomas has suffered and will continue to suffer both financially and emotionally. The would-be lottery winner’s suffering totals about $50,000 in damages.
Los Angeles TV station KCAL 9’s legal analyst Steve Meister is not confident that the lawsuit will be successful. “I think that the family has a losing case,” said Meister. “Look, the kid was ineligible to purchase it. It’s not the state’s responsibility to now say, ‘Okay, well, because someone let you play, here’s your million dollars.’ ”
The plaintiff’s attorney disagrees. "We have received calls from prior winners with similar stories who were paid under similar circumstances," said plaintiff attorney Mark Quigley in the law firm’s press release. "We want the Lottery to reconsider its decision and pay the winning ticket to Mr. Thomas, because it's the right and fair thing to do."
What do you think? Should the state lottery commission honor the ticket or did father and son forfeit their chance at big money by letting a 16-year-old make the purchase? Click here to share your opinion in a CSP Daily News Twitter poll.
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