Jan. 13--The chances of winning Wednesday's $1.5 billion Powerball jackpot may be infinitesimally small, but there's a fair chance chaos will erupt if the winners are co-workers in an office lottery pool.
Going in together on lottery tickets is a morale-boosting tradition in some workplaces, but the camaraderie it builds has been known to collapse when the office pool actually buys the winning ticket.
Take the employees at Pita Pan Bakery in Chicago Heights. A group of 12 workers who claimed the winning ticket in a $118 million Illinois Mega Millions drawing in 2012 were sued by five of their co-workers who argued they should share in the winnings because they regularly contributed to the bakery's rolling pot of lottery money.
In a 2013 case in Indiana, seven employees at Lou's Creative Styles hair salon sued a co-worker who claimed that the winning numbers for the $9.5 million prize belonged to her personal lottery ticket, not the ones she had bought for the office pool at the same time.
The parties in both cases reached confidential settlements.
