The answer was uniformly:  "He might hit the lottery."

And, FWIW, that was enough - by itself - to resist summary judgment.

Thinking back, one of those cases was against some schlub who'd taken a teenager captive, then tortured and sexually abused him during the course of a day or so.  I'd come into the case after the schlub had been convicted and was serving time (or maybe had completed his sentence - it was over 15 yr ago, after all), and was on the side trying to collect on the judgment (for a change).

I used the lottery excuse for litigating that case, and it worked for me, too.

For most people who are uninsured or have no real net worth (at best, they and the bank own their house) - i.e., the vast majority of people - the lottery is the only way, and only hope, of getting serious coin.  Which says an awful lot about our "opportunity society", and about the way things are.

Here's the story:

"BOSTON --  A man listed as one of the state's most dangerous sex offenders has won $10 million in the Massachusetts lottery, but the attention may have landed him in new trouble.

Daniel Snay had been living and working in Massachusetts since 2004. In January, he paid $20 for a "Billion Dollar Blockbuster" scratch ticket at a suburban convenience store and hit the jackpot.

He picked up the first of 20 annual checks for $500,000 on Jan. 30. And the Massachusetts Lottery Commission said he gambled legally. But his story caught the attention of police in neighboring Connecticut, where Snay had lived for several years and where, officials said, he never informed authorities he was moving out of state.

Connecticut Trooper William Tate said Snay could face up to five years in prison if convicted of failing to notify authorities of his change of address, a felony. He said Snay hadn't confirmed his address for the Connecticut sex offender registry since May 2004, though that state requires address verification every 90 days.

"We're trying to determine when he moved, why he didn't register with us and whether any charges are warranted," Tate said.

Snay, 56, a divorced father of five, was convicted several times of indecent assault and battery from 1974 to 1987. Two of the assaults were on a child under the age of 14.

Snay's lawyer, Joseph Fabbricotti, said that when Snay moved from Connecticut, he believed he had to register only in the state where he was moving.

"If that is incorrect, we'll have to fix it," Fabbricotti said. "He wasn't running. He's been living here for four years."

He is classified in Massachusetts as a Level 3 offender, people deemed most dangerous or most likely to re-offend.

Even if they make this dumb, dumb waist of time law what's to prevent a sex offender from giving the ticket to his wife or girlfriend or mom or dad and he will end up with the money anyways.  what can congress realy do the answer is nothing.  All they could realy do is say hey if you have a sex offender in your family you cant play the lottery that way we can insure no sex offender can get there hands on big bucks.  Now your punishing people who have not done a dam thing wrong.