People v. Rehm

13 Cal.App.2d Supp. 755 (1936) THE PEOPLE, Respondent,

v.

ROBERT W. REHM, Appellant.

California Court of Appeals.

April 18, 1936. Benjamin Elconin for Appellant.

Ray L. Chesebro, City Attorney, Newton J. Kendall, Assistant City Attorney, and John L. Bland, Deputy City Attorney, for Respondent.

Bishop, J.

Appellant was charged with the offense of having in his possession a lottery ticket and a ticket purporting and understood to be a share and interest in a lottery. The only debatable question presented by this appeal from the judgment following his conviction, is whether or not the enterprise, to which the ticket in appellant's possession opened the door, was proved to be a lottery. It is our opinion that the explanation of the scheme given by appellant's own witness, accepted at its face value, proved it to be a lottery, and the judgment should, therefore, be affirmed.

This witness testified that in September he had been appointed local agent for the Grand National Treasure Hunt of New York City. Based on the instruction he had received by mail from headquarters, he had passed on to the agents he had employed, one of whom was the appellant, and he gave from the witness stand, the following understanding of the rules of the "hunt". Tickets, such as were found in the possession of the appellant, were to be sold for a dollar apiece. A ticket permitted the holder to enter the Grand View Park, located at Singac, New Jersey, until December 23, and also to enter the "Grand National Treasure Hunt contest for $50,000.00." The prizes offered in the contest ranged from a first prize of $25,000 down to two hundred prizes of $50 each.

To each purchaser of a ticket, a sheet of paper was forwarded. On one side were six cartoons, under each being a list of twenty-four or twenty-five suggested titles for the cartoon above. "The object of the game," the printed instructions on the sheet declare, "is to select the best or most appropriate title for each cartoon". Across the top of the cartoons appears the statement: "Select correct cartoon titles and write answers in coupon. See other side." On the other side is the "answering coupon" with six blanks where the titles selected by the holder of any ticket were to be placed.

When filled out, the coupons were to be mailed to reach New York by December 10th. A committee of competent [13 Cal.App.2d Supp. 757] judges was to be selected by the association in charge of the contest, to award the prizes among the contestants according to "the order of the excellence of their answers in the opinion of the judges". In the event of a tie for any prize an essay of not to exceed one hundred words was to be submitted and the tie determined by the relative merits of the essay.