Jackpot
The Lavigueurs lived in Ville-Marie, a poor neighborhood of Montreal, Quebec. Jean-Guy Lavigueur had been unemployed for a year and a half after having worked for 34 years at United Bedding Company.
The father was raising his four children, Sylvie, Yve, Louise and Michel, with the help of his brother-in-law Jean-Marie Daudelin, since the death of the children's mother, Micheline Daudelin, who died of sudden cardiac arrest in 1983. The couple also had two girls who died in infancy from heart problems.
A few days before the draw, Jean-Guy Lavigueur lost his wallet, which was given back to him by a good Samaritan, 28-year-old William Murphy, from Vancouver, British Columbia, who had recently moved to Montreal, and was himself unemployed. Murphy found the wallet and gave it back to Lavigueur, with a lottery ticket which he knew was the jackpot winner. When he got to the Lavigueur's house to give them back the unsigned winning ticket, it was the eldest son, Yve, who answered the door and refused to let him in, not understanding what he wanted. Murphy came back a second time to meet the father.
The new millionaires were Jean-Guy, Sylvie, Yve and Michel Lavigueur, Jean-Marie Daudelin, and William Murphy, with whom the family agreed to share the jackpot. In 1986, Louise Lavigueur, the only member of the family who did not take part in the purchase of the ticket, sued her father to get a share of the jackpot.
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