Legal Lottery
May 27, 2004 | 11 Comments
My Magic Chinese Fortune Cookie once again failed to predict last night’s Lotto numbers, so I’m out $58 million. Should I sue the restaurant that sold it to me? It’s not as crazy an idea as you might think.
Ordinarily a lawsuit that frivolous would be dismissed on the spot, with the attorney bringing it sanctioned into bankruptcy and possibly thrown behind bars for contempt. But throw a little religion into the mix, and the courts get all teary-eyed and mushy. Consider the case of Pando v. Fernandez, in which a teenager successfully sued a woman for a cut of her $2.9 million New York lottery jackpot on the theory that he prayed to a “Saint Eleggua” to make her numbers win.
The plaintiff lost the first round at the trial court level (485 N.Y.S.2d 162 [Sup Ct NY Co. 1984]), which dismissed the suit on the ground that the kid could never prove that St. Eleggua was actually responsible for the win. But instead of castigating the litigant, the court waxed eloquent on the wonders of religious ignorance:
To recover, plaintiff must demonstrate that his prayers caused the miracle to occur. How can we really know what happened? Is a court to engage in the epistemological inquiry as to the acquisition of knowledge and belief through proof or through faith? Faith is the antithesis of proof. It is a belief which is firmly held even though demonstrable proof may be lacking. It is instinctive, spiritual, and profound, arrived at not through a coldly logical appraisal of the facts but, in Wordsworth’s phrase, by “a passionate intuition”. “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” Paul, Epistle to Hebrews: xi, 1.
* * *
Establishing that this occurred is not susceptible to forensic proof. It calls for matters which transcend proof — the existence of saints, the power of prayer, and divine intervention in temporal affairs. “What is faith,” said St. Augustine, “unless it is to believe what you do not see?”
* * *
This court has no desire to denigrate the power of prayer, matters of spirit, or the workings of the hand of God, but such matters, not susceptible of rational courtroom proof, are for theology and not jurisprudence. Concededly, “there are more things in heaven and in earth . . . than are dream’t of in [our] philosophy.”
But mere lip service wasn’t enough for the appellate court (499 N.Y.S.2d 950 [1st Dept 1986]), which reversed and sent the matter to trial:
[P]laintiff was obligated only to use his best efforts to enlist Saint Eleggua’s help in exchange for which defendant agreed to pay for the tickets and split the prize should it be won. If, as is possible, defendant bargained simply for the assistance of plaintiff whose help she believed would be efficacious, having received that assistance she cannot now disown her obligations under the agreement by imposing the additional condition that plaintiff prove the effect of his prayers. Plaintiff’s prayers in this scenario had value to defendant because she believed in their power to help effectuate the desired end; the prayers having been made, the sought after consequence, she believed, was at least more likely to follow. It is then entirely possible that defendant bargained simply for the benefit of those acts which if performed by plaintiff she felt would enhance her chances of winning the lottery. Under this version of the agreement plaintiff as required to do no more than purchase the tickets, select the numbers, and pray to the Saint in order to fulfill his end of the bargain. Certainly, none of these actions is impossible to prove in a court of law.
The court later froze the winnings, finding that plaintiff was likely to succeed on the merits.
Aside from the surprising disregard for the ordinary legal requirement of proof of causation, there are at least three problems with the court’s logic. First, even if the plaintiff was only required to pray to Eleggua, he would still have to prove the existence of the saint to demonstrate he was praying to it. Had plaintiff instead been offered payment to drop a letter into a mailbox on Elm Street, the defendant might rightly object on the grounds that there was no mailbox there — even if the letter had nevertheless arrived after having fortuitously being blown on to the intended recipient’s lawn or having been delivered by another relative. The point is hardly academic here, as it turns out that there’s not even an imaginary Saint Eleggua. The lower court conceded in a footnote that the closest thing its research could uncover was a “St. Eligius,” the patron saint of goldsmiths (“[N]o wonder defendant sought to invoke his aid as the means to overwhelming riches!” the judge lamely exclaimed). Unbeknownst to either reviewing court in those pre-internet days, the kid wasn’t praying to a saint at all, but to the Santeria voodoo spirit Eleggua.
Second, the notion that the prayers had “value” to defendant because she believed they enhanced her chances is nonsense. The prayers would have value only if, in fact, their utterance actually caused the winning numbers to be selected
May 27th, 2004 @ 10:16 am
I don’t know if the trial court was “wax(ing) eloquent” on the wonders of religious ignorance. Based on my reading of the excerpt RA included in this posting, it appears that the Court is explaining why there’s a separation of church and state – for the very reason that prayer is not susceptible to forensic proof, and thus has no place in the considerations of a Court of law.
The title of RA’s blog is “An Atheistic Examination of the Culture of Belief: How Religious Devotion Trivializes American Law and Politics”. I think this entry is (unfortunately) an excellent example of this.
May 27th, 2004 @ 11:29 am
I don’t think this case is about prayer and its efficacy. I think the case is about whether the winner made an oral agreement that if Pando did certain things that Fernandez would give him a share of the winnings. Those certain things could just as easily been, say, to watch the kids, or loan a few bucks so that she could buy the ticket. She owes him a share of the winnings.
But there’s a second issue here. She was stupid enough to believe that prayer might help but refuses to accept that her friend’s prayers were answered in spite of $2.9 million worth of evidence to the contrary. What kind of religious person is she? Does she only believe in prayers that won’t be answered? Isn’t she concerned that the saint will smite her, or whatever ‘dissed’ voodoo saints do?
May 27th, 2004 @ 12:22 pm
http://ww2.nscc.edu/doty_h/cases-test_3e.htm
I don’t have good googling skills, and can’t find a better cite, but it appears there were three components to the contract: Pando bought the ticket in Fernandez’s name, Pando selected the numbers, and Pado offered the prayer in exchange for half of the winnings.
If the case was based solely on the prayer aspect, I wonder what both courts were thinking, since two other major aspects of the contract (buying the ticket and selecting the numbers) are essentially devoid of any religious component.
I’m not much for contract law though, and TRA’s arguments about defining what counts as fulfilling the prayer aspect of the contract work for me.
I find if more of an example of the need for a written contract over an oral one.
May 27th, 2004 @ 1:13 pm
at this very moment, a good man is about to die. i am not learning anything from this. no jesus fucker can tell me that this is a lesson in fucking anything, no one can learn shit by the death of anotherhuman being. he is not going to hell, he is not going to heaven, but, dammit, he is getting away from pain….pain bigger than the one suffered by a guy being nailed to a fucking cross. pain lasting more than a day or two….pain that morphine can not take away….
i hope he dies soon….i want him to stop suffering….now….his aunts are praying, the stupid cunts….sitting next to him right now….at the hospital….are they blaming their version of god for all this pain?
i bet not….but i bet they are sick fucking assholes….maybe santa claus can answer their prayers….stupid sluts…..stupid…..i wish i could stuff their stupid bibles up their asses…and that would not hurt as much as the cancer that is eating up my friend….
a young man…only 36…..a great lawyer…..i loved him so much, i let him go….he did great…..i wish i had the power to let him go now….today….really really go….go nowhere…..just far from this pain….
are the ones who suffer really blessed? FUCK THOSE WHO THINK THAT……..shit……
May 27th, 2004 @ 2:43 pm
Sorry to here your pain Eva.
May 27th, 2004 @ 2:55 pm
…..thanks…..no pain here, compared to his….
May 27th, 2004 @ 6:50 pm
I can’t believe you jokers are still here. Stupid hobgoblins!!
May 27th, 2004 @ 7:19 pm
You need to start groveling and quit eating those god-damned-cookies! Jesus doesn’t like those cookies, there an abomination and full of sin coated sugar. Turn from your sins and have some angels food cake instead. Amen.
May 28th, 2004 @ 7:31 am
Prayer does work! Or so say these morons:
Course, this study doesn’t say if what percent of sick people who pray stay sick or die anyway (I am betting close to 100).
(I hope this doesn’t show up 8 times… that is what preview is showing along with “MT::App::Comments=HASH(0x813ebe0) Use of uninitialized value in sprintf at lib/MT/Template/Context.pm line 1187.”)
May 28th, 2004 @ 8:21 am
Seth, IANAL, but contract law isn’t that complex, and I share your puzzlement. Plaintiff claims they made a contract in which he was promised 1/2 the winnings in return for certain services, and I don’t see why the prayer matters in view of the other services rendered. Some possible defenses here:
1. The defendant did not agree to the deal as stated. That is an issue of fact for a jury to decide.
2. The plaintiff did not complete his side of the deal. AFAIK, the defendant is not arguing that.
3. A contract requires an exchange of items of value. Taking a trip to the store to buy the ticket (using the defendant’s money, I assume), is worth something, like a gallon of gasoline and a few minutes time. So whether picking the numbers and praying to a voodoo saint are worth anything or not, buying the ticket certainly qualifies this as a contract.
4. Some contracts are unenforceable as public policy. If the plaintiff worked for the lottery commission, then this deal would be void as an attempt to evade the laws against employees playing the lottery. In many states, legislation has made gambling debts nenforceable, but whether this falls under those laws is doubtful – and the defendant doesn’t seem to be arguing that it does.
5. The contract was obtained by fraud or threats. A gross disproportion between the value of the items exchanged can be evidence of that. If you signed your new house over to Tony the Strangler for $1, you probably didn’t do it voluntarily… This might be where the court is getting things confused, and trying to compare the value of a voodoo prayer to $1.45 million. But the proper comparison would be the expected value at the time the deal was made, which is the passible payout times the probability of getting it. That’s less than the price of the lottery ticket, or they’d be out of business. A trip to the store to buy a ticket is well worth half the price of the ticket.
As for prayer being worthless: I would agree, but in economics and law, the value of an item is what it will fetch on the market. It’s gone out of style, but medieval knights often paid monasteries to pray for them and their deceased relatives.
May 31st, 2004 @ 2:44 am
Damn, RA, this case is many years old! I thought it was something recent.
Can you please tell us how the case fared?