One Sues Other Over $100,000 Winnings : 2 Plumbers’ Lottery Pact: Was It Just a Pipe Dream?

Rick Mayes and Melvin Coleman were buddies. They rode to work together. They bowled together. They stopped off after work together for sodas and a few lottery tickets.

The two Orange County plumbers even had a pact to share their lottery winnings, Mayes says. He’d win a couple dollars, and they’d go in together for another ticket or two; Coleman would win a few bucks, he’d split it with Mayes.

That was the way it was, Mayes says, until July 24, when Coleman walked into an Arco AM-PM Mini Market in Hawthorne and walked back out to the truck with a $100,000 winner. Mayes, waiting there on the passenger side, reminded him of the agreement. Coleman said: What agreement? Mayes recalled.

That is how the buddies became adversaries in a $1-million lawsuit filed Friday in Los Angeles Superior Court over who gets what share of the ticket.

In what is believed to be the first decision of its kind--one that could have consequences for the thousands of back-room and bedroom pacts made every day involving the California Lottery--Judge Jack M. Newman issued a temporary restraining order Friday preventing the state lottery commission from distributing the $50,000 of the proceeds that Mayes claims is his until the dispute is resolved.

Mayes, 30, of Orange, said he and Coleman made a pact on their first day at work on a plumbing job in May to evenly split whatever they made off the lottery tickets they bought on the way to work.

“We car-pooled together, and we figured the odds would be with us when we bought lottery tickets together,” he said. “We’d win $2 or $5, and we’d buy some more tickets, or a couple dollars and split it.”

On that day, Mayes said he went into the minimart, like any other day, and bought several tickets. Coleman was right behind him. They went back out to the truck and started scratching.

“He goes, ‘Rick, I got it.’ And I said, ‘All right! We’re $50,000 richer!’ And he said, ‘Nope, it’s my ticket.’ ”

But that’s not the way Coleman tells it. He says that while he occasionally made agreements with co-workers to split lottery winnings, he never had any agreement with Mayes.

“Sometimes I’d buy a couple, or he (Mayes) would. We never bought together,” Coleman said emphatically. “I don’t split nothing unless two people say that right there, and then you both go in and buy the same amount of tickets.”

On this particular morning, he said, Mayes was in a bad mood because they’d had an argument at the bowling alley the night before.

“He wasn’t even talking to me, but now all of a sudden we made a deal to split my winning ticket. It’s unbelievable in my own eyes, believe me,” said Coleman, 33, of Garden Grove.

“You know the old saying, money is the root of all evil, and I believe it,” he said. “Something nice happens to somebody, you can’t even enjoy it. Sometimes I wish I didn’t even win this damn ticket, to tell you the truth. But I’ll fight this thing to the end, because I don’t believe in somebody winning something for nothing.”

Mayes said he’s just plain hurt. “My word is as good as I’m standing here,” he said.

The lawsuit, which alleges breach of partnership, bad faith, fraud and a few other things, asks the court to sort out who gets what while the temporary restraining order is in effect. It also seeks $1 million in punitive damages from Coleman in recognition of the “ill will, spite and hatred” that went into the deed.

Jeffrey Scharf, Mayes’ attorney, said the court order issued Friday recognizes that when somebody promises to give up part of his lottery ticket, he’d better mean it.

“They are enforceable oral contracts, and if that agreement is breached, they have a remedy in the law,” he said. “That’s what the court system is for.”