Buyer who tossed $1m ticket "Its my money" - May Karma visit soon and often

[jberryhill]

41. Well there you go again...

"Proof"... "belonging"... I try not to mix legality and morality.

We can take as given that it was originally her ticket, because the case wasn't decided on lack of proof of those facts, but on whether she had intended to abandon a winning ticket.

Leaving aside legal concepts like property and abandonment, the bottom line is that the winning ticket would not have been in the bin for the second woman to redeem had it not been put there by the first woman who was mistaken.

The "greed" you are perceiving is simply bitterness at the feeling that her mistake has been exploited. If you accidentally discarded a birthday card with a $100 dollar bill in it, and I found it, I would return it to you. But if I was a mind not to do that, and you claimed it all, there would still be nothing to stop me from giving you $10, even if you continued to claim it all.

Law doesn't provide "right" answers. It provides more or less predictable ones, in a ritual social exercise which keeps people from beating and killing one another.

It is manifestly indisputable that the woman with the money has given nothing to the woman who put the ticket in the bin. But you call the woman who put the ticket in the bin "greedy" because you have heard her words, despite the fact that actions of the woman with the money speak as clearly.