Short-haul trucker Mandeep Singh Maan said he had purchased winning ticket personally, separate from the office pool
When Mandeep Singh Maan’s coworkers learned of his $2 million BC/49 lottery win, they congratulated the Surrey short-haul trucker on his good fortune.
But the four workmates at the freight and warehousing company “soon became suspicious,” according to the judgment in a lawsuit over the winnings.
The five of them had regularly bought lottery tickets together in 2021 and 2022, but Maan failed to tell them of his own windfall in August 2022.
They only found out about it from the official B.C. Lottery announcement, the judgment said. Two weeks later, they filed a lawsuit in B.C. Supreme Court.
Balvinder Kaur Nagar, Sukhjinder Singh Sid, Binipal Singh Sanghera and Jeevan Pedan wanted a judge to rule that as members of the office lottery pool with Maan, they were each entitled to a fifth of the winnings.
The plaintiffs “came to court with sincerely held belief in their entitlement to a share of the winnings” because they did play the lotto regularly together and because they found Maan’s post-win behaviour suspicious, but “they have not established any legal entitlement,” ruled Justice Y. Liliane Bantourakis in dismissing their claim.
“I’m so relieved right now,” said Maan by phone on Monday. “The reputation of my family was on the line.”
Maan said neither his win in the lottery or in the court changed his relationship with the other four because he says they were never friends, they just “work for the same company.”
He continues to work for the same company, he says, because “I didn’t want to run away like a loser or a liar.”
The five employees told court they pooled their money to buy lottery tickets in 2021 and 2022 and the person who purchased the tickets changed. Frequently, but not always, Maan or Sidhu bought the tickets, according to the judgment.
But they disagreed how often they bought tickets as a group, whether the pool was always made up of the same five people, which tickets they bought or whether photos of tickets they bought were sent to every buyer, it said. There was no formal agreement or purchase records, wrote the judge.
Maan told court he was a prolific lottery player on his own and spent about $400 a month on tickets.
On Aug. 15, 2022, 10 days after a picture was circulated of the group’s latest ticket purchases, Maan bought a lottery ticket using his debit card from a Langley Chevron gas station for the Aug. 17, 2022, BC/49 draw, the judge’s reasons said.
Bantourakis ruled the evidence presented during pre-trial hearings and at trial was at times unreliable because of discrepancies and she concluded that based on the evidence as a whole, she found “Mr. Maan did not receive group money or tickets on Aug. 12, 2022, and did not use group money or tickets when he bought the winning ticket on Aug. 15, 2022.”
Nor did she agree with the plaintiffs’ submission that Maan’s failure to share news of the win was significant, as “that conduct is no more consistent with a guilty mind than an understandable, if unfortunate, concern over how his coworkers might react.”
Even if the parties bought tickets together with frequency, it is “not sufficient to discharge the plaintiff’s’ burden of proving on a balance of probabilities that they entered into a binding oral agreement … that would give them a claim over the winning ticket,” she wrote.
Experts have long advised people buying lottery tickets as a group to keep good records and have written rules, including who is in the group and what happens when a person fails to contribute for a draw, and distribute photos or copies of tickets to group members of all tickets bought for the group.