Who is entitled to the ticket? ('Hero or Hate Crime' IASIP episode)

Ethics
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In the episode “Hero or Hate Crime” of the show “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” the gang tries to deliberate on who owns a lottery ticket they purchased. The facts are:

  1. Dee directly purchased the ticket.
  2. However, it was purchased with Dennis’s money; he gave her the money to tip the cashier, but she bought the ticket instead.
  3. The ticket came out of Dee’s purse and was picked up by Mac, and he is currently in possession of the ticket.
  4. Frank saved Mac’s life and claims to have at least some part of the ticket.

There is a legal analysis of the episode by the channel “Legal Eagle,” and the host concludes that under American law, it would probably be Dee who owns the ticket but will have to compensate Dennis.

I personally came to the conclusion that, under my own view of property and ownership, Dee buying the ticket simply cannot be considered a valid transaction. As such, the only conclusion is that the ticket is still owned by the store, and the store doesn’t own the money they received from Dee. If Dee uses the ticket, she would have to compensate the store and not Dennis, and independently of that, the store would have to give the money back to Dennis.

Is this a ridiculous conclusion? I smell potential practicality issues. Are there any? Should they matter? Who do you think is entitled to the ticket?

PS: Please, I do NOT want to hear about property being a purely legal concept and whatever the law says is what ought to happen. I am discussing ethics here. To be more precise, you can agree with the legal conclusion but I don’t want an argument saying “it’s correct because it’s the law”.

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This is called involuntary conversion through a commission of theft. So, no, the conclusion of the host that Dee owns the ticket is incorrect. Dennis gave the money to Dee to tip the cashier. Instead, Dee “stole” it and bought a ticket. The other stooges were thrown in to the plot to confuse you.

Question is, what if it turned out to be a winning ticket?

1 Like
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To clarify, by “own” I mean that (he says) the law would say that Dee gets to keep the ticket but compensate Dennis with money. What would the law say? That Dee should give the ticket to Dennis?

I know, I just included them to give the full picture.

It is a winning ticket in the episode. But I don’t think it changes anything to my conclusion. It would be for the store.

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Why you keep saying for the store? A tip is not an entitlement. If I had intended to tip the waiter and I took out 20 from my pocket, but then I forgot to give it to the waiter when I saw a friend walking down the street. I left the restaurant with my money. The waiter is not entitled to it until I hand it to him.

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I am not talking about the tip. My logic is simple: At the beginning (before Dee buys the ticket), the store owns the ticket. The only way to change who owns it is to have a voluntary exchange. Here, we do not have a voluntary exchange, as the person who owns the money (Dennis) does not agree to exchanging it with the ticket. So, no transaction of ownership happened. The store still owns the ticket, and Dennis still owns his money despite the change in possession.

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Ah, except that you forgot that a legal tender is an acceptable payment upon presentation, unless the store refused to sell the ticket. But they did, as we are now in this conundrum. So, the store lost as well. There was an exchange there. The store sold the ticket to Dee.

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Because Dee, on your view, was acting as Dennis’s agent, and never the “rightful owner” of the money, right? (Btw, I think talk of owning money only makes sense when we’re talking about treating the currency itself as a collectible. And I feel certain the store doesn’t “own” the lottery tickets either, so your example is icky, but no matter.)

My question is: what if Dennis is not the “rightful owner” of the money? How far back to you want to go? That’s a little more than the practicality issue you were probably worrying about.

There’s an old Carl Sandburg poem about this, I think. A tells B to get off his land. B asks what it makes it A’s; A got it from his father. Same question; he got it from his father. Finally to one of B’s questions, A says, “He fought for it,” so B says, “Fine. I’ll fight you for it.”

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I am not sure what you mean. Yeah she took the ticket in exchange of the money, that’s a payment but it’s not her money so not a valid exchange of ownership.

An exchange of possession but not ownership is what I am arguing.

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Yes.

Who does? No one?

Well, I was assuming he owned the money. But sure, it could be that he doesn’t own the money, then whoever owns the money, owns the money and the ticket is owned by the store.

A should say they homesteaded it as the owner died.

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No, your syllogism is off. The store and Dee had a “fair” exchange. But Dennis and Dee did not have a fair one.

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Are you saying Dee and the store had an exchange of ownership?

Cause there is possession and ownership. If I take your apple without your agreement and put in your hand my orange, I still have your apple and you have my orange. We exchanged possession but not ownership. It’s still your apple.

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We’re talking about a legal tender, not things. Think, if I picked up a dollar bill from the ground, it’s not mine either. But I can certainly go to the store and buy shit.

Also, I’m going to watch a movie now.

‘later Suny.

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Your view is that legitimate exchange is only possible between rightful owners, right? I can steal your car and sell it, but that sale is illegitimate.

My question was, what lengths are you prepared to go to to establish or legitimate ownership?

I have money in my bank account, paid me by my employer. If I’ve actually been slacking off for years without being noticed, violating the terms of employment I agreed to, is that my money? Haven’t I gotten it illegitimately?

The money my employer pays me with, where did they get it? How many steps back until you find some sort of theft or cheating or slavery or other expropriation? Are they “really” the “rightful owners” of the money they pay me with? All of it?

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Good question albeit a bit tangential. I guess I take a ‘keep it first’ approach. If it seems you own it (the few previous transactions seem legitimate) then it’s fine until you find some evidence against the ownership.

I guess it could depend on the terms exactly and the employer. It’s more like a scam which I don’t think is exactly the situation here. But if the employer doesn’t notice, it may be that they do not care and it’s still a voluntary exchange.

Well, I have no idea; I am not omniscient.

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And I am saying that it does not matter, you wouldn’t own what you bought with it (unless it is your dollar bill).

See you later.

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That’s kinda the point. The store sold a lottery ticket to Dee, who was actually misappropriating Dennis’s money. How were they to know? How is Dennis to know whether the money he gave to Dee legitimately belonged to the person who gave it to him?

I’m trying to get you to wonder if the concept of “rightful owner” is so simple everyone can just refer to that to decide what’s legitimate, or whether it is in fact complicated enough that we have laws, so that there are rules we can rely on, contest, refine, and so on.

Do you think we have property law just because someone was overthinking it?

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I don’t know but I am not saying it’s a problem that they assumed it was Dee’s money.

Laws aren’t there because it’s complicated. Laws simply aren’t trying to find the truth about moral questions. Are you trying to argue that the law is correct because that’s what “people” have settled on as a solution?

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This seems to make the most sense so far.

Some possibly relevant questions/scenarios:

A.) Did Dennis explicitly say “Here is [whatever amount of money was given]. Now tip the cashier [the exact amount of money that was given].”?

If she tipped nothing, she completely used the money for herself and not what was asked by the person who gave it to her. If however, she did tip the cashier, even a penny, then bought the lottery ticket (or otherwise gave any change as a tip), his request was fulfilled as he was not specific enough to explicitly constitute the entirety of the money given to have been used for said tip.

B.) Dee could easily say “oh I used my own money, yours is still in my pocket, sorry. Would you like it back or should I go back to the store and tip him him twice?” without any reasonable way to prove otherwise.

And another concern. Though I’m not specifically sure about this one.

I think the fact Dennis simply said “here, leave a tip” as a casual gesture, it is not quite a solid legal contract on paper to procure an item, simply to give alms or “charity.” If it were a solid legal contract on paper, or a verbal contract to purchase a good or service, then perhaps the legal process and system can be utilized to retrieve the ticket, and any funds it produces.

Also, one might argue Dennis simply paid Dee to leave a tip, even if that event occurs tomorrow or one year from now. It was not specified in the verbal contract. Sure, it was implied, perhaps, by normal society. But not explicitly cast. So long as Dee visits the store immediately or perhaps at any time in the future and tips “the clerk” perhaps it must that specific clerk", Dennis’ request was ultimately fulfilled.

Not part of the logical argument but relevant enough: Sometimes lottery companies have really blanket terms as far as invalidating winnings if anything even remotely suspicious or “complicated” such as the above scenario occurs. They really know how to cover their behind, let’s say. The preference is to wash your hands of any subterfuge and simply call it invalid. There’s always a “read the full terms at [website here]” prior to playing. And it is really, really robust. So that must be factored in: the fact that there is an additional dynamic, quite possibly an ultimate and final one that decides whether the ticket is valid or not.

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Pretty much.

Well, she could and she would indeed own the ticket I think, but she doesn’t do that.

I don’t know why the exchange of ownership would need a legal contract. In any case, we don’t see exactly how he asks her to tip, but from the episode we can assume it was clear the money was to be given as a tip specifically on this particular day. You can watch clips of the episode in the video.

I don’t think it matters in the question of ownership but you can try to explain why you think so.