A Sydney man suing the state lottery over an unclaimed $3.3 million prize says he didn't retrieve his ticket after it was binned by a shop attendant because he was on parole at the time.
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"I felt it was stealing," David Owen Renshaw said in the NSW Supreme Court.
Justice Des Fagan on Friday heard final arguments in Mr Renshaw's long-running lawsuit over the September 1997 Oz Lotto draw ticket.
The judge will hand down his decision on a future date.
Pensioner Robert Clemett, whose claim over the winning ticket was dismissed by another judge in 2014, also listened to the arguments from the public gallery.
Mr Renshaw, a disability pensioner, launched his lawsuit in 2016 against NSW Lotteries over the unclaimed $3.3 million, which is one-third of the first division prize.
He says he bought a ticket from Greenfield Park and presented it at Granville Railway Station newsagency following the draw.
When he handed in his ticket to the newsagency he says he saw the words "provisional winner" come up.
But the shop attendant - who didn't speak English very well - threw the ticket in the bin saying "no winner" and refused to return it.
Mr Renshaw - who is acting for himself - told the judge on Friday that the attendant had screamed at him and ran into the office locking himself in.
"I told him to get the ticket out of the bin as I didn't want to take it myself," he said.
"I was on parole at the time. I was afraid to take the ticket myself without being given it as it may have been stealing."
Only one of Mr Renshaw's legal claims remains before the court - that of misleading and deceptive conduct of the Granville "agent".
The lottery organisation's barrister, Justin Hogan-Doran, argued that under the relevant legislation Mr Renshaw was well out of time to bring the case.
At the time, the legislation stated a case had to be brought within three years, meaning three years after September 1997, the date when Mr Renshaw said his ticket was binned.
The law was later changed to extend the period to six years but Mr Hogan-Doran said even if that applied Mr Renshaw's case "was well out of time now".
Australian Associated Press
