The $12.8 Million Lottery Ticket Fight: What It Means For Unwritten Workplace Policies In Ontario

A Phoenix convenience store clerk is fighting to keep a $12.8 million lottery ticket after his employer fired him and sued to determine who actually owns it. 

The case is playing out in Arizona, but it raises two questions that come up constantly in Ontario litigation: can an employer discipline or fire you for following an unwritten workplace policy, and who legally owns property that changes hands under disputed circumstances?

In November 2025, a customer at a Circle K store asked a clerk to print $85 worth of lottery tickets but only paid for $60 of them. The remaining tickets sat by the register overnight. One of them turned out to be a $12.8 million winner. The store manager, Robert Gawlitza, says he bought the leftover tickets the next day after clocking out, following what he and several coworkers describe as a long-standing company practice requiring employees to purchase accidentally printed tickets out of their own pocket. He says he even confirmed the purchase with his district manager by text before going ahead.

Circle K’s position shifted once the ticket’s value became known. The company fired Gawlitza in January 2026 for allegedly violating store policy and filed a lawsuit asking a court to determine who owns the ticket. 

Ontario employers can dismiss an employee without cause, provided they give proper notice or pay in lieu of it. Firing someone for cause, meaning without any severance at all, is a different matter. Ontario courts have consistently held that just cause is a high bar, sometimes described as the capital punishment of employment law, and employers who claim it without solid grounds routinely lose. 

If Circle K’s own management confirmed the purchase in writing before firing the employee for making it, an Ontario court would likely see that as strong evidence against just cause for termination. We break down how that threshold works in our article on just cause termination.

An employer’s internal practices, even unwritten ones, can matter a great deal in wrongful dismissal litigation. If a business acted on a practice for years and only enforced it retroactively once it became inconvenient, that pattern can support an employee’s case that the termination was pretextual rather than genuinely about misconduct. 

We saw a version of this dynamic recently in Ghazvini v. CIBC, where the bank’s own conduct and documentation undercut its position at trial. 

The lesson for Ontario employers is the same either way: policies, written or not, need to be applied consistently, and employees terminated based on a shifting rationale have a real claim. For a broader look at your options if this happens to you, see our page on wrongful dismissal.

Setting the employment issue aside, Circle K’s lawsuit raises a separate and arguably more interesting question: once an employee has purchased something through a valid transaction, can the employer simply take it back by asserting the sale never should have happened? 

In Ontario, wrongfully taking or interfering with someone else’s property can give rise to a claim in conversion, one of the torts our litigators handle regularly. If a completed, paid-for transaction occurred and the seller later regrets the terms, that regret does not usually undo the sale. The seller’s remedy, if any, typically lies in showing the transaction itself was invalid, not in simply repossessing the asset after the fact.

This is where Circle K’s own employee handbook language becomes important in the reporting: it reportedly permits off-duty employees to buy lottery tickets as long as another employee processes the sale, which is exactly what happened here. A business dispute like this, over whether a transaction was validly completed and who holds title to the resulting asset, is a classic civil and commercial litigation matter, and the outcome will likely turn on the precise wording of that policy.

For employers: document your policies clearly, apply them consistently, and think carefully before firing an employee for following a practice your own management approved in writing. A termination that looks retaliatory once the facts come out can turn a manageable dispute into a costly wrongful dismissal claim. Reviewing your employment contracts and workplace policies before a dispute arises is far cheaper than litigating one after the fact. Our team can help with drafting employment contracts and workplace policies that hold up under scrutiny.

For employees: if you are disciplined or terminated after following a policy your employer condoned, keep every text message, email, and witness statement that supports your account. Those records are often what separates a strong wrongful dismissal claim from a weak one.

If you are facing a dispute involving an unwritten workplace policy, a disputed termination, or ownership of a valuable asset, contact Pinto Shekib LLP at info@pintoshekib.ca or 416-901-9984 for a confidential consultation.