In an unpredictable legal ruling, a UK judge has ordered a lottery winner to split half of his £1 million hoard with a waiter who claims to have predicted the win
In a bizarre turn of events, a judge in England has ordered a lottery winner to split his £1 million jackpot with a waiter who works for him and claims to have predicted the win by way of a dream.
Fatih Ozcan, a waiter at Kapadokya Turkish restaurant in York, had a dream that he was showing a large amount of money to his manager Hayati Kucukkoylu, and took it as a sign.
The next day he promptly bought himself a lottery ticket, before pestering Kucukkoylu for hours to also purchase a number of EuroMillions lottery tickets from a supermarket nearby, Metro reports.
Perhaps Ozcan does indeed have a prophetic bone: Unbelievably one of Kucukkoylu’s tickets hit the jackpot.
Ozcan then insisted he was entitled to half of the winnings because although his boss paid for the ticket and chose the winning numbers, the waiter physically purchased the tickets after convincing Kucukkoylu to buy them as a result of his dream.
Evidently, the manager did not agree, and stated that the winnings were his alone.
The case went to court, where Judge Mark Gosnell ruled on behalf of Ozcan saying that because the plaintiff was “a strong believer in the power of dreams”, he interpreted his dream to mean that he and Kucukkoylu would win the lottery.
Also in Ozcan’s favour was the fact he pestered his boss for nearly three hours about purchasing a ticket before Kucukkoylu relented, and that there was surveillance film that showed the pair picking out the numbers.
“I find that the effect of these conversations was that Mr. Kucukkoylu and Mr. Ozcan entered into a contract to jointly play the lottery on an equal basis,” Judge Gosnell said.
For Ozcan, the dream that turned into a nightmare is now over: His share works out to £500,000.
No word if he continues to work as Kucukkoylu’s waiter.
