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Stu Bykofsky: Club still griping over 14G payout. Well, Turf luck.

THIS ONE WAS going to be easy. Sometimes subjects we columnists write about are like ghosts, dancing shades of gray on a lunar landscape.

THIS ONE WAS going to be easy.

Sometimes subjects we columnists write about are like ghosts, dancing shades of gray on a lunar landscape.

This one was going to be easy, black and white as a domino tile.

When Danielle Dittus, 27, who punches out betting tickets at the Turf Club Services horse parlor in South Philly, issues an erroneous ticket and can't cancel it in time, she has to pay the Turf Club for the ticket, according to her attorney, Bill Ciancaglini. Under post-time pressure, this happens to Danielle and other employees from time to time. Writing thousands of betting tickets a week will produce some errors.

I first wrote about this in March 2007, after Danielle issued an $84 bet ticket she didn't have time to void. The $84 had to be repaid before she started work the next day, under Turf Club rules, says Ciancaglini.

In an amazing break for Danielle, a struggling, single mother raising three young kids, the ticket she had to eat turned out to be a winner, worth $14,168.90. Her bad ticket had become a gold strike. But . . .

The Turf Club refused to pay Danielle.

As I understand it, if a Turf Club clerk makes a mistake and issues a bad ticket, the clerk owes the Turf Club. But if a bad ticket is a winner, the Turf Club doesn't owe the clerk.

That's wrong.

That was my opinion then and it's my opinion now.

But it is not my opinion alone.

Danielle sued. On Jan. 24, 2007, an arbitrator ruled in her favor and ordered the Turf Club to pay her for the erroneously issued, but winning, ticket.

Stubborn as a tree stump, the Turf Club refused to pay and filed an appeal to get a jury trial. They ignored this column's good advice to not haul a poor, single mom before a Philadelphia jury when the Turf Club was wearing a black hat and the Joker's twisted smile.

Last September, a jury heard the case and - surprise, surprise - returned a verdict in Danielle's favor. "The jury took 34 minutes - I timed it," says lawyer Ciancaglini. "We didn't even have time to finish our lunch." (I can't speak with Danielle because, in addition to stiffing employees, the Turf Club stifles them by forbidding them from talking with the press.)

The jury verdict should have ended the story, but the Turf Club - unbelievably - has filed yet another appeal.

Is the Turf Club heartless or brainless? At some point, if it hasn't happened already, lawyer and court fees will swamp the 14Gs Danielle believes is due her.

I call Andrew Kramer, the Turf Club's attorney.

Not surprisingly, he tells a different story.

The Turf Club has bought back erroneously issued tickets - both winners and losers - "hundreds of times," and there was testimony to that fact, says Kramer, adding that he played video at trial showing Danielle turning in the bad $84 ticket to her supervisor.

Ciancaglini responds that "90 percent of the buybacks were for single-digit amounts," that there are thousands of bad tickets annually and that his witnesses swore they had to go into their own pockets to cover most bad betting slips. The videotape shows Danielle going to her boss, he agrees, but what you can't hear is him trying to convince her to split the $14,168.90.

The opposing arguments by the opposing lawyers could throw a gray blanket over this case.

But since both an arbitrator and a jury have seen it Danielle's way, it's black and white to me.

And the Turf Club's dressed in black. *

E-mail stubyko@phillynews.com or call 215-854-5977. For recent columns:

http://go.philly.com/byko.