JUDGE DELIVERS JUSTICE TO GIVE HIM HALF OF £1m win
BY GABRIEL PRINCEWILL
Winning the lottery is everybody’s dream, but nobody who wins hopes to fight a court battle to claim their money.This was the unfortunate the turn of events for Fatih Ozcan whose dream of winning the lottery amazingly came true within 24 hours of waking up.
In Mr. Ozcan’s dream, he was holding a bundle of money, and standing in front of him was his boss, Hayatti Kucukkoylu. Mr.Ozcan interpreted this to mean he and his boss were to be joint winners of the lottery, and pestered his boss the following day to produce some money from the till for the purposes of bringing the details of the dream into reality. After giving in to the demands of the waiter, the 47 year old boss of the Turkish restaurant in York proceeded to try to claim the entire winnings when he realised the numbers had truly come up just as was seen in his employee’s dream.
His selfish argument was that he had paid the money for the ticket and had chosen the winning numbers, and as a result was entitled to the whole share of the £1m fortune. His obviously distraught employee claimed he had contributed half of the money to the ticket and insisted that it was his dream that had prompted the winning in the first instant. When Ozcan’s insistence for a share of the winnings that emanated from a dream he had fell on deaf ears, he panicked a concocted a bogus allegation to the police that his boss had stolen the ticket from his jacket. He told the same story to Camelot- the operators of the national lottery. Police arrived on the scene and arrested Kucukkoylu, holding him in the cells for 9 hours.
Mr. Ozcan later admitted to the court that he had made up the bogus allegation to ensure his boss did not abscond with the cash or send it to Turkey thereby making it difficult to retrieve. Last year, two judges viewed CCTV footage of events that transpired in the restaurants as the winning slips were filled in, as well as angry texts messages between the pair following the astonishing win. Judge Gosnell concluded that each man had contributed equally to the winning ticket and should therefore split the fortune between themselves. However, the discontent boss appealed the decision on the grounds the first judge had ‘failed to misunderstand to understand the significance of the text messages’ and that he deserved the full million
Dismissing the appeal, Lord Pitchford said ‘in my view this case has no real prospect of success’
The judge acknowledged that the weight of the case supported Mr. Kucukkoylu’s case and Mr. Ozcan’s interpretation of them depends on the judge’s conclusion as to the relationship between them . Rightly in my view, the Judge decided that the texts were equivocal. He assessed he had to rely on other factors to determine whether the ticket was purchased jointly
This led him to prefer the evidence of Mr. Ozcan on a number of significant issues, including the texts. There is no reasonable argument that the judge misunderstood the significance of the text evidence. The conclusions he reached were properly open to him and I see no prospect of the court of Appeal reaching a different conclusion. For that reason, the application must be dismissed”. The judge ordered the retention of the 50/50 split.
The case highlights the evil part of human nature that can emerge when money comes into the equation. The thought that the boss would want to keep all the cash from a lottery win he would have had no chance of winning in the absence of his employee’s dream is sickening. How thoughtless and selfish can a human being be? Most reasonable individuals would intuitively agree that even if the boss had produced all the money for the ticket, he ought to happily share the winnings with the man who considered him in the first place, courtesy of a dream. What a remarkable dream that was though!
It is not the first time lottery wins have produced a detonating bomb to destroy relationships. In 2002, when 19 year old bin man won £9.7m on the national lottery, he gave a £1m to his aunty, Kelly Muncaster. On top of that he spent £18,000 to renovate an already lavish home by any standards. His then girlfriend, Sandra Aitkens married him 4 months after the win, only to divorce him within a year because of his extravagant lifestyle. Carroll subsequently hid one of his homes in which he was residing, and worth about £250,000 in his aunty Kelly’s name to prevent his ex-wife from claiming half of the house worth through the courts. He had every reason to trust his aunty. What happened next was most shocking. Following an unchecked lifestyle characterised by unbridled spending, when Carroll blew most of his winnings, his aunty looked upon him as a fool. She woke up one morning on the wrong side of the bed and gave Carroll notice to leave the property because it is in her name. This, despite knowing fully well that it was his home, and he had already giving her a million! As the saying goes, the love of money is the root of all evil!
