Deno, Tisdale, Adams, Fairley, and Dickerson were all employees at the Waffle House restaurant in…

Deno, Tisdale, Adams, Fairley, and Dickerson were all
employees at the Waffle House restaurant in Grand Bay, Alabama. Seward was a
regular customer at the restaurant. On several occasions, Seward would travel
to Florida and buy lottery tickets. On his return, he would give the tickets to
various friends and family members, including the employees of the Waffle
House. A drawing for the Florida lottery was scheduled for Saturday night,
March 6, 1999. Seward traveled to Florida in the week before that drawing and
purchased several lottery tickets. He placed each individual ticket in a
separate
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Deno, Tisdale, Adams, Fairley, and Dickerson were all
employees at the Waffle House restaurant in Grand Bay, Alabama. Seward was a
regular customer at the restaurant. On several occasions, Seward would travel
to Florida and buy lottery tickets. On his return, he would give the tickets to
various friends and family members, including the employees of the Waffle
House. A drawing for the Florida lottery was scheduled for Saturday night,
March 6, 1999. Seward traveled to Florida in the week before that drawing and
purchased several lottery tickets. He placed each individual ticket in a
separate envelope and wrote the name of the intended recipient on the outside
of the envelope. On the eve of the drawing, Seward presented three of the employees
with an envelope containing a ticket, but none of them won. The day after the
drawing, Seward gave Dickerson and another employee envelopes containing
tickets. When Dickerson opened her envelope, she determined that the numbers of
her ticket matched the winning numbers drawn in the lottery the night before.
The ticket won a prize of approximately $5 million. Shortly afterward,
Dickerson’s four co-employees sued her, alleging that they and Dickerson had
orally contracted with each other that if any one of them should win, the
winner would share any lottery winnings with the other ticket recipients. An
Alabama statute states that “all contracts founded in whole or in part on a
gambling consideration are void.” Must Dickerson share the lottery proceeds
with her co-employees?

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