A Co Kildare couple have secured a High Court injunction preventing the National Lottery from paying out some £1.65 million, half of Saturday's Lotto jackpot of more than £3 million. Mr Justice Kearns granted the interim order just before 9 a.m. yesterday.
The injunction applies to next Friday when the couple will apply for the order to be continued pending the determination of their legal action.
Mr George and Ms Patricia Murray, of Millbrook, Naas, claim they are rightfully entitled to one of the two winning tickets of Saturday's jackpot, each of which is worth £1,655,259. They claim they had played the winning numbers and had handed these in on a pre-marked ticket but in error were given a Quick Pick ticket when Mr Murray went to buy their Lotto tickets at The Gem, Poplar Square, Naas, last Saturday.
His position would be completely prejudiced if £1.65 million was paid out on foot of a ticket bought at The Gem, Mr Murray said.
In court, Mr Alan Mahon SC, instructed by solicitor Pat Reidy, for the Murrays, applied for an interim injunction restraining Mr Ray Bates, director of the National Lottery, and An Post National Lottery company from paying out any prize money payable or claimed in respect of the Lotto draw of December 1st, on foot of a lottery ticket purchased in Behans shop, otherwise known as The Gem, Naas, on that day.
In an affidavit, Mr Murray, a construction worker, said that, with his wife Patricia, he played the Lotto every week and had done so since the Lotto started. He generally played Lotto at The Gem.
Last Saturday, he went to The Gem between 4.30 and 5 p.m. to play the Lotto and believed he did so about 4.45 p.m. Other people were purchasing groceries and also playing the Lotto but he went in to play the Lotto only.
Mr Murray said he was served by a girl, aged 19-20, at the Lotto machine. He had dealt with this girl previously. There were just two girls, and possibly another person, working behind the counter.
He said he had a card marked with personal family birthday numbers which he always produced to the person on the Lotto machine. Initially, he had handed in the previous week's Lotto ticket and asked the girl to check whether any winning numbers had come up on it. These were the same numbers he was about to play.
The girl told him none of the numbers had come up in the previous draw.
He then handed in his premarked Lotto ticket, the girl put it in the Lotto machine and he had received back a Lotto ticket (the Lotto ticket receipt) which he put back into the plastic envelope along with the pre-marked ticket that he used. Mr Murray said he had no occasion to look at the Lotto ticket at that time. Mr Murray said he and his wife were in Tallaght shopping centre on Sunday and he went into a shop to check the Lotto numbers.
They saw immediately their numbers had come up but did not have their Lotto ticket and went home. There, they checked the ticket and saw it was a "Quick Pick" and the numbers did not conform to the numbers on their premarked ticket.
Mr Murray said he never used a Quick Pick but always the pre-marked birthday numbers. Mr Murray said the numbers marked on his prepaid ticket included the following numbers on Block B - 2, 6, 9, 16, 18, 30 which numbers were the winning Lotto combination.
He said there was no one else in the country apart from the holder of the original Lotto ticket sold in Behans, and the defendants, who could say with absolute certainty what the other numbers on the lotto ticket were - the numbers in Blocks A, C and D.
He believed what had happened was that the girl in The Gem had given his proper Lotto ticket to another person in the shop, either before him or behind him.
He understood there were two winning tickets for Saturday's jackpot one of which properly belonged to him.
There was a mistake on the part of the staff of The Gem, which was an authorised agent for the National Lottery, he said.
