Woman Wins Claim To £750 Share Of Prize

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30393, 18 March 1964, Page 1

Woman Wins Claim To £750 Share Of Prize

(New Zealand Press Association)

AUCKLAND, March 17.

A Grey Lynn woman today succeeded in a claim for £750 as her share of a £3OOO prize won by a syndicate of women in the Golden Kiwi lottery.

The plaintiff, Bettie Lorraine Jones (Mr M. D. Robinson) claimed the money from Eileen Gillespie (Mr M. F. P. Frankovich) in a hearing before Mr F. McCarthy, S.M., in the Auckland Magistrate’s Court.

In evidence, Mrs Jones said after starting work with a drycleaning firm she asked Mrs Gillespie if she could join a syndicate which regularly bought tickets in the lottery.

Mrs Gillespie agreed to a syndicate of four members and it was arranged that Mrs Jones would pay Is 3d a week as her share. Mrs Jones said she continued to pay Is 3d until December 13, when she paid 2s 6d to Mrs Gillespie, being payment for shares in lotteries 131 and-132. Mrs Jones said Mrs Gillespie received a telephone call on December 16 to the effect that a ticket she held had won a prize.

“I said that I would not come back to work for the rest of the year, as a joke, and Mrs Gillespie said that if I did not come back to work she would not pay me my share of the money,” said Mrs Jones. Mrs Jones said she saw Mrs Gillespie on January 3 after Mrs Gillespie returned from a holiday. She asked if she could have her share and Mrs Gillespie said she did not have it. “Her husband came out of the house and ordered my husband and I to get off the property or he would call the police. We left after that,” said Mrs Jones. She said the other members of the syndicate had received their share of the prize money. Evelyn Davey, owner of a Herne Bay bookshop, said Mrs Gillespie had paid for the winning ticket on the Friday before it was drawn. She telephoned Mrs Gillespie after hearing the ticket had won a prize. Later, Mrs GiUespie came

to the shop and told customers that three other women beside herself held shares in the ticket. Mrs Davey said Mrs Gillespie had told her that Mrs Jones had paid her share of the ticket but she would not pay her the money if she did not go back to work. She said Mrs Gillespie had a credit account at her shop. Mrs Gillespie said in evidence it was not true that she had told plaintiff she would not get any money unless she kept on working. Nor had there been any mention in Mrs Davey’s shop about members of the syndicate. Mr Robinson recalled Mrs Davey to

give evidence in rebuttal later in the day. In his summing up, the Magistrate said Mrs Gillespie’s remark about Mrs Jones not receiving her money unless she returned to work seemed to indicate that Mrs Gillespie recognised that Mrs Jones was entitled to a share.

He accepted the evidence that Mrs Gillespie had a credit account with Mrs Davey, which Mrs Gillespie had denied point blank in her evidence in chief. “I find that the plaintiff paid 2s 6d on December 13 in respect of lotteries 131 and 132 and the action must succeed," said the Magistrate.