High-profile litigators face off over winning Lotto ticket.

Arwa Farraj may be one lottery winner who wasn't so lucky.

The 27-year-old Rancho Cucamonga woman has gone to trial in Pomona Superior Court against her former employer over ownership of an $8 million lottery ticket--a trial that pits two of L.A.'s most powerful litigators.

Farraj, a former gas station clerk, claimed her supervisor cashed in a winning lottery ticket she purchased in 1999, according to court papers.

Appearing for the plaintiff is Browne Greene, a senior partner at Greene Broilett Panish & Wheeler LLP, a firm known for its multi-billion and multi-million dollar jury awards against large corporations.

For the defense is Pierce O'Donnell, a partner at O'Donnell & Shaeffer LLP with a long list of large corporate clients and a specialty in complex litigation. O'Donnell joined the defense sometime after ConocoPhillips, the oil giant that owns the Circle K convenience store where Farraj worked, failed in its effort to be removed from the case.

The two attorneys went head-to-head in Pomona last week as the trial commenced three and a half years after Farraj brought suit against ConocoPhillips and Gurinder Ruby, her former supervisor.

"It was a dream that became a nightmare," Greene said, pointing out that his client has lost her job and her marriage as a result of the incident. "And after all this, there's the humiliation of having this ticket stolen."

O'Donnell said the matter should not have involved his client. "Circle K has no business being in this case," he said. "It is a purely personal dispute."

Ronald Specter, a partner at Specter & Levy LLP, also representing Circle K, did not return calls. Nor did Ruby's attorney, Sanford Horn, a sole practitioner in Pasadena.

According to court documents, Farraj says she purchased a Quick Pick Super Lotto ticket on Christmas Day 1999. Farraj, who had worked at the Circle K for two weeks, came back the next day and inserted the ticket into a machine that told her she held a winning ticket, court papers say. She showed the ticket to Ruby, the store's assistant manager.

"(Ruby) took it into an office, and obviously checked the records, and found this was a lottery winner," Greene said. "He came back and told her she had an $88 winner and gave her $88. He kept the ticket, and 10 days later, went to the Lottery Commission and claimed it for himself without telling anyone."

Belated discovery

About 30 days after the ticket was purchased, another Circle K employee told Farraj about Ruby's $8 million lottery win, which totaled around $2.5 million after taxes.

Farraj "knew she'd been had," Greene said. He claims the segment of a store security videotape, found by La Verne Police, covering the time of Farraj's ticket purchase had been erased.

La Verne Police Detective Lt. Carl Brubaker would not confirm an investigation, but noted that cases involving the ownership of a lottery ticket occur about once or twice a year. In most cases, he said, the department refers complaints to the California Lottery.

Lottery spokeswoman Norma Minas confirmed that an $8 million lottery ticket was paid to Ruby within weeks after it was purchased and that an investigation took place soon afterward.

Anyone who claims to be the winner in the Lottery must verify the ticket at the agency's terminals and undergo two interviews before receiving money, she said. The California Lottery had distributed the winnings to Ruby when Farraj's then-husband, Mukesh Sadhu, called a California Lottery security agent on Jan. 26, 2000 to report the stolen ticket, she said.

"She underwent questioning by our security division," Minas said of Farraj. "There were some inconsistencies in the interview with her, like she couldn't remember how much she spent ... But she was supposedly given $88, and there was no prize of that amount that day."

Minas said that the California Lottery, which was originally named as a defendant in the Farraj case but later dismissed, turned over the case to the L.A. District Attorney's Pomona office.

Greene is banking the success of Farraj's case on a similar lottery dispute he handled in 1995. In that well publicized case, Greene represented Soo Jang Chae, the owner of Airport Liquors in Riverside who claimed two of his employees conspired to take a $12.2 million Lotto ticket from him.

Greene, hired by Farraj after she learned of the Chae case, is being paid on a contingency basis. Farraj is seeking the $2.5 million lottery payout, plus 7 percent interest and damages.