If you think you have a bad day: A waitress was tipped a lottery ticket and won $10,000,000. She was then sued by her coworkers for a share, then sued by the man who gave her the ticket…

    by Worth-Boysenberry-93

    33 Comments

    1. Worth-Boysenberry-93 on

      “This story follows Dickerson, an Alabama waitress who in 1999 received a lottery ticket as a tip from a customer. The ticket won $10 million, and chaos followed.

      Coworkers sued, claiming they had agreed to share any winnings; the man who gave her the ticket demanded a portion; and her ex-husband, enraged over the fortune, abducted her at gunpoint. In the struggle, she shot him in self-defense. Even after surviving that ordeal, Dickerson faced years of legal battles with the IRS, which taxed her heavily when she placed her winnings into a family corporation. Her saga became a modern American parable about luck, greed, and the dark side of sudden fortune.

      Added Fact: In 2012, the U.S. Tax Court ruled against Dickerson, requiring her to pay over $1 million in gift taxes, ending one of the strangest lottery cases in American legal history.”

      From historyfeels on IG.

    2. That’s why you send a lawyer and a financial manager to pick up lottery winnings… If you win the lottery you basically need to disappear your presence from your former life and exercise your legal right to not be identified in any way other than the LLC you set up to pick up the check… There’s a whole industry that preys on lottery winners because its easy money from people who aren’t used to having it.

    3. GhalanSmokescale on

      And that’s why you keep your mouth shut in the event of winning the lottery. It only attracts vermin.

    4. Remarkable-Low-7588 on

      I may be wrong but wasn’t this the premise of “it could happen to you” with Nicholas Cage and Bridget Fonda?

    5. She lost the original case about sharing with waitresses then won on a technicality about sharing gambling from what I can  find.

      At least some of the problems were possibly of her own making.

    6. Sad-Counter-6617 on

      I’m from the area where this happened. She was a waitress at a 24 breakfast food chain restaurant in the deep south and the man was a frequent customer. He would go get lottery tickets from a bordering state (lottery is illegal here) every week and the waitresses would pool their money and give it to him to buy tickets. As a group, the employees bought tickets with a share and share alike agreement to increase the odds for winnings. The winning ticket was given to her as a tip and he expressly stated if she won – she had to buy him a new truck.

    7. DecentHawk9850 on

      🤫Loose Lips Sink Ships..
      🤨One day that mouth of yours gone get you trouble,and thennn…🙄

    8. As someone who lives in “normal world”, if you give someone sometging, its theirs. End of story.

    9. WilkinsonRadio on

      Why give the ticket as a tip if you’re just going to try and claim it? Absolute lowlife

    10. TraditionalLaw7763 on

      I would’ve never said a word. Worked the rest of my shift, calmly clocked out. Gone home. Ate a snack. Went to bed. Woke up the next morning, cashed in my lotto ticket… put it in the bank… gone to work… rinse, repeat. Then after about a month… I’d quit and never come back. Ta-dah! 🎉 No lawsuits. No one coming after me.

    11. TheManInTheShack on

      The waitstaff sued her saying that they had a verbal agreement that if anyone tipped a lottery ticket and it won, they would split the winnings. She lost but the Alabama Supreme Court sided with her on appeal because the verbal agreement was a gambling contract and since gambling isn’t legal in Alabama, the court ruled the contract unenforceable.

      The customer that gave her the ticket claimed that she said she would buy him a truck if she won. The court dismissed that case.

      She took annual payments of $375K instead of a lump sum.

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