"The simple mistake that cost me $3 million"
A Sydney man is taking NSW Lotteries to court, claiming a simple communication error with a newsagent worker denied him a $3 million windfall.
David Owen Renshaw, a disability pensioner, claims the words “provisional winner” lit up on a lotter terminal when he was redeeming his ticket at Granville Railway Station, but the worker told him he wasn’t and discarded the ticket.
“I believe my ticket was destroyed by an employee of the Granville (newsagent). I asked him what the words meant — I didn’t know what the words meant until 2015,” Mr Renshaw told a NSW Supreme Court hearing this morning.
Mr Renshaw believed the worker was unable to communicate properly.
“I don’t mean to be rude to the man, but he shouldn’t have been using that machine,” he said.
The man had tried to redeem the “mixed entry coupon” on September 23, 1997, and thought nothing of it until Boxing Day 2015 when he was discussing it with a friend, who told him the term “provisional winner” must mean something.
When they found out there was an unclaimed jackpot from the draw Mr Renshaw knew something was up and started writing to NSW Lotteries straight away.
Justin Hogan-Doran, who is representing NSW Lotteries, told the court the case was “doomed to fail”, and claims a search of tickets purchased in Mr Renshaw’s time frame failed to match those which he had described in his testimony.
There is no record of the ticket he claims to have purchased,” he said.
“He has no record of that ticket, we have no record of that ticket, therefore it cannot be produced. [The case] would be doomed to fail.”
What do you think? Does Mr Renshaw have a case?