Powerball winner's daughter named in lawsuit

Thursday, June 22, 2006 posted 11:22 AM EDT

CHARLESTON - A charter jet company is saying Ginger Whittaker Bragg, the daughter of Powerball winner Jack Whittaker, has yet to pay almost $50,000 for four flights she took in the summer of 2005.

Spitfire Aviation of North Carolina filed the lawsuit June 16 in Kanawha Circuit Court against Bragg, Whittaker LLC and AGA Automotive, a company Bragg owns.

Spitfire says it is owed $48,873.01 for flights to Atlantic City, N.J., Jeffersonville, Ind. and Gulfport, Miss.

It says it was common for Bragg to seek the company's services, and she routinely took flights without asking for a price quote or signing a contract.

But she took three flights, one to Atlantic City and two to Jeffersonville, without paying, and Spitfire says it had to ask her to pay up.

She gave employees a blank check on her fourth flight, to Gulfport, and the company filled it out in the amount of $48,873.01, the lawsuit says.

However, the check was returned because of insufficient funds, says Spitfire, which is also seeking punitive damages.

In 2002, Whittaker won the single-largest lottery payout of $315 million with a cash option of more than $113 million.

But since then, he's had several run-ins the law. He was charged with DUI in Kanawha County in January 2004 after he was found sleeping in his vehicle along Interstate 64 in Nitro. Kanawha Magistrate Tim Halloran later suppressed sobriety test results, causing the case to be dropped.

Later that year, Whittaker was charged with -- and later pleaded no contest to -- assaulting a bar manager in Putnam County. He was put on two years probation and ordered to attend Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.

Earlier this year, two Summers County women filed a federal civil suit accusing Whittaker of assault and battery, groping them, threatening to kill one of their friends and illegally firing a gun.

Bragg has also had her share of trouble since Whittaker's Powerball win. In 2004, her daughter Brandi's body was found wrapped in a sheet and a plastic tarp behind a junked van on property owned by her boyfriend's father after being missing for two weeks.

Her funeral service was held on Christmas Eve. It was determined she died from a drug overdose.

Judge Charlie King has been assigned Spitfire's case, which was prepared by W. Brent Hackney of Jones Law Group in Charleston.

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