You are to play the role of an Illinois lawyer by 1) writing a brief and 2) participating in a class moot court appellate hearing. In preparation for completing your assignment, you may talk with other members of the class and other people who are neither law students nor lawyers or paralegals. You may consult any text or library source at your disposal such as the Illinois Statutes. You may share the contents of your brief with other members of the class; however, each member of the class is responsible for submitting his/her own brief bearing his/her signature as affirmation that the brief is the original work of the author.
Your brief should be brief - not more that 1,500 words - and should be type neatly without erasures, grammatical errors or misspellings. Your brief should comprise a logical syllogism consisting of the following three parts:
Your work will be evaluated on the basis of clear reasoning with special emphasis on how a court could apply your rationale to later cases involving similar questions.
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Silas Marner entered the Golden Egg minimart to purchase a ticket in the Illinois Lottery and some other merchandise. While waiting in the checkout line, he filled out a mark-sense card with his lucky number and gave it to the store clerk, Uriah Heap, - a man of no particular skill, understanding, experience or education. For example, Heap was a smoker - which seems to be a requirement for all minimart clerks. Heap inserted Silas' card into a card reader which was part of a computer connected to The Illinois Lottery Commission's wideband data sales network. He hit the start key and the computer both printed Silas' ticket and made a log of the ticket's serial number together with the date and time of sale.
Silas paid for both the ticket and the merchandise, picked up his bundle and went out into the parking lot. In the process of opening the door of his car and putting his bundle inside, Silas dropped and lost the lottery ticket - or so he will later claim. A few hours later, Jane Eyre, 8 years old, went into the Golden Egg minimart to buy some bubblegum. On her way out of the store and while skipping across the parking lot she saw a lottery ticket on the ground. She picked it up and started to play with it. She examined and found no name or other owner identification on the card so she put it in her pocket. After school the next afternoon, she walked by the minimart and saw a sign in the window announcing a $10,000 winning ticket had been sold there yesterday. When she took the ticket she found out of her pocket and compared its number to that shown on the window sign, she was surprised and delighted to learn that she had found the winning ticket. She ran into the store and told Heap that she had found a ticket that was a $10,000 winner and wanted to know how she could claim her prize. Heap told her to take the ticket home to her mother. Watching the conversation between Jane and Heap was Ed Murrow - a local television anchor who reported the event on the afternoon news. The story was promptly picked up by the wire services and it appeared as a feature article in newspapers all over Illinois.
When Jane showed the ticket to her parents, there was immediate joy in the Eyre household. Her parents took her shopping and made reservations for a trip to Disneyland. The next day, Mrs. Eyre presented the ticket to The Illinois Lottery Commission and claimed the $10,000 prize. Because of the press coverage, The Illinois Lottery Commission knew that the ticket had been lost and that the prize was not being claimed by the purchaser of the ticket; however, it decided to pay the $10,000 prize to Mrs. Eyre because it viewed the ticket as a negotiable bearer instrument and there was no name on it other than Mrs. Eyre's signature.
It was the only after Mrs. Eyre claimed the prize that Silas read about Jane finding a lost lottery ticket in the parking lot of the Golden Egg minimart. He looked for the ticket that he had purchased (or claims to have purchased) and not finding it immediately went into a state of panic. When he recovered, he called Mrs. Eyre and told her that he was the owner of the lost ticket. Mrs Eyre accused him of lying, told him that she was not going to give him any money because the law was Finders Keepers - Loosers Weepers, that possession was 9/10ths of the law and that her daughter found the ticket fair and square. She said that if she had found the ticket, then she would have claimed the prize without telling anyone she had found it, that this is what any adult would have done and that Silas was trying to exploit her young daughter's naivete'. She then told Silas not to bother her anymore and hung up.
Still in a state of shock and disappointment, Silas went to The Illinios Lottery Commission and related the events which have been described. He then asked for his prize - which The Illinois Lottery Commission refused to pay. Its ground was that while it knew that Mrs. Eyre had presented a ticket that had been lost; nevertheless, the ticket was a negotiable bearer instrument since Silas had not signed the back of it and that it had been properly redeemed. In Illinois, the law is that all tickets are negotiable bearer instruments. There is no requirement that The Illinois Lottery Commission make any determination of legal or equitable ownership.
Silas next consulted William J. Bryan, Esq. who conducted an investigation. He found that the lottery ticket had been purchased at the Golden Egg minimart at the time Silas claimed to be in the store. Silas was also able to find the cash register receipt Heap had given him with purchase of merchandise. While it did not show the time, it did show the date and it placed Silas in the store on the same day when the lottery ticket was sold by Heap.
Bryan then went to visit Heap and Heap agreed to sign a sworn affidavit as his testimony to the following facts:
Bryan also discovered that the Eyres had already spent all of the prize money on toys and travel, that Mr. Eyre had an unskilled job and that the Eyres had not paid back any of the family credit card debt. Based on the evidence and information he uncovered, Bryan recommended that Silas authorize a suit to recover the prize from both the Eyres and The Illinois Lottery Commission. Since Bryan was willing to accept a contingent fee, Silas agreed.
A trial was held and a jury found that on a preponderance of the evidence it appeared that the winning lottery ticket had been purchased by Silas. The judge then entered a verdict in favor of Silas for $10,000 against both the Eyres and The Illiniois Lottery Commission. Both defendants have filed an appeal questioning the judge's interpretation and application of the law. That appeal is now before The Illinois Supreme Court.
The ultimate question before the Illinois Supreme Court is who is to have the $10,000 in dispute. If the verdict in favor of Silas is affirmed, then who must pay $10,000 to him and what is the responsibility of each defendant. The jury's finding of fact - that Silas purchased the lottery ticket - is not a subject for appellate review. Therefore, your brief is to be directed at questions of ethics and law. You must elect to be one of the following: