Lawyer Briefly Wins Contest for a Year Off Work
A Georgia lawyer was elated when he won a contest that offered a year off work and a $100,000 prize.
Theodore Scott, 60, had worked as a lawyer for 22 years, the New York Times reports. He wrote in his winning entry for the contest by Gold Peak Tea that his job had taken him away from his family: a spouse of 35 years, four sons and four grandsons.
“I had a family. I had a home,” Scott wrote. “But I let my career defer them. I let my debts outweigh them. I let deadlines sideline them. I let an office, computer, phone and emails crush them.” He pledged to spend more time relaxing and sipping iced tea at home.
But happiness was replaced by disappointment when Scott found out he was disqualified because he used a website to seek others’ votes, the Times says. Scott had violated the official contest rules, according to Gold Peak Tea.
The company cited contest rules that prohibit “vote farming,” inducements for votes, “or any other activity that artificially inflates such finalists’ votes as determined by sponsor in its sole discretion.”
Scott, on the other hand, maintains that he did not break the rules since his plea for votes involved real people rather than robotics. Now he’s using his persuasive abilities with a Twitter account supporting his cause and a rebuttal on Gold Peak Tea’s Facebook page.
