'Winning the lottery should be a happy event. In this case, sadly, it has ruined relationships'
The Supreme Court of British Columbia has dismissed the claim of four former coworkers who said they were entitled to shares of a $2-million BC/49 lottery jackpot won by a coworker.
The case, Nagra v. Maan (2025 BCSC 38), arose after Mandeep Singh Maan won a the prize on a ticket purchased on Aug.15, 2022.
The plaintiffs – Balvinder Kaur Nagra, Sukhjinder Singh Sidhu, Binipal Singh Sanghera, and Jeevan Pedan – claimed the ticket was part of a workplace lottery pool and that they were entitled to equal shares. They argued that the group had a longstanding verbal agreement to pool money for tickets twice weekly.
The plaintiffs testified that each member of the group regularly contributed $10 toward ticket purchases every Monday and Friday. According to their testimony, the pool funds were primarily used to buy a predetermined "Standard Package" of tickets, which included BC/49. They further alleged that Maan was responsible for purchasing the Aug.15 tickets on behalf of the group after receiving pooled funds earlier that day.
However, Maan denied these claims, arguing that any lottery pools were irregular, informal and typically formed on an ad hoc basis. He maintained that the winning ticket was purchased with his personal funds, as part of his routine lottery-playing habit, which he testified involves spending about $400 monthly on tickets.
Previously, a group of seven workmates in Alberta hit a lottery jackpot prize of $5 million.
Justice Y. Liliane Bantourakis – in a decision issued Jan. 10, 2025 – determined that the Nagra v. Maan (2025 BCSC 38) case largely rested on witness credibility and documentation.
Notably, there was no written agreement governing the lottery pool, and only 16 photographs of alleged group ticket purchases were presented as evidence. The judge found that these photographs depicted inconsistent contributions and did not demonstrate a binding agreement for regular group purchases.
The plaintiffs' testimony also faced scrutiny. Sanghera, who claimed to have given Maan $40 on August 15, 2022, provided contradictory accounts of when and where the money was exchanged.
“The fact remains that I find Mr. Sanghera’s evidence unreliable on matters of central importance to the claim and I reject it. Without it, evidence that Mr. Maan received group money or agreed to buy for the group on August 15, 2022 is lacking,” said Bantourakis.
Additionally, the plaintiffs alleged that Maan used a free play and $5 winning ticket from an earlier group purchase to buy the winning ticket. However, Bantourakis dismissed this theory, stating that it was speculative and inconsistent with the evidence, which showed that group purchases generally amounted to $50 or more, whereas Maan spent only $12 on tickets that day.
Bantourakis concluded that the plaintiffs had failed to prove the existence of a binding lottery pool agreement that guaranteed equal shares of winnings. The judgment emphasized that while the coworkers occasionally pooled funds for lottery tickets, there was no consistent practice or clear terms underpinning their arrangement.
“The fact that the parties bought lottery tickets together, even if they did so with some frequency, is not sufficient to discharge the plaintiffs’ burden of proving on a balance of probabilities that they entered into a binding oral agreement with the defendant that would give them a claim over the winning ticket,” said the BC Supreme Court justice.
The judgment also left the matter of costs to be determined following further submissions, should the parties wish to make them.
Previously, two female employees of a lottery retail outlet in Ontario were arrested for their alleged involvement in the claiming of a prize from a stolen winning ticket.
