Chicago Sun-Times: Woman awarded $1 million for her Pepsi challenge

LAS VEGAS Judy Richardson Yeats took a huge gamble and won $1 million. Not a big deal in Las Vegas, you say? It is if you didn't win it playing blackjack or a slot machine.

Yeats placed her bet inside the Clark County Courthouse, and it was a doozy.

She made an all-or-nothing bet that eight jurors would find that she was the true owner of a Pepsi bottle cap that was the winner in the 1997 Pepsi-Cola Globe Buck Contest. If she lost, the $1 million cap would become the property of Sindy Allen, a former co-worker of Yeats.

According to Yeats, she bought the Pepsi on March 17, 1997, from a convenience store next to the Wild Oats health food store where she and Allen worked. She got busy and set the Pepsi on a counter where she normally kept her things.

Allen, however, opened the pop the following morning and found it was the only bottle in 545 million worth $1 million.

"She said she found it, she was going to keep it, and she wasn't going to share it," Yeats said.

So Yeats filed a lawsuit, and after three years, a Clark County jury heard the case last week. The jurors sided with Yeats.

The case has attracted national attention, and more is coming with "Dateline" and "Inside Edition" both planning segments on the purloined Pepsi.

"I think it has gotten a lot of attention because it was so simple, and everyone has an opinion on who the rightful owner is," said Robert Goldstein, who represented Yeats.

To settle the lawsuit out of court and split the proceeds would have given her children the wrong idea, Yeats said.

"I wanted them to know that what she did wasn't right," Yeats said. "I never would've picked it up because it didn't belong to me. If you can't leave something out at work and pick it up the next day, it's a sad world."

Allen's attorney, Benson Lee, said he argued that Allen didn't know whose Pepsi it was and that there was no proof it was Yeats'. The old adage about possession being nine-tenths of the law was true in this case, Lee said.

Unfortunately, Lee said, the jury didn't see it that way. They decided after just an hour of deliberations that the Pepsi did, indeed, belong to Yeats.

Jury foreman Jack Barber of Las Vegas said there was no debate among the jurors; they immediately agreed the Pepsi belonged to Yeats. All of the witnesses testified it was found where Yeats was known to keep her personal property.

"I felt (Allen) was a young lady who saw an opportunity to gain something, and she didn't give it a lot of thought before she took action," Barber said.

Fellow jurors Richarda Maes and Regina Small said they hoped their verdict would send a message.

"Integrity and honesty always win out," Small said.