This is not true, you can pick your own numbers when playing the lottery. as far as this particular story goes, I am not sure if the numbers were his own, or he did a "Quick Pick" (a random set of numbers, generated by the machine.)
That's the thing.
If he picked his numbers -- and has the scan sheet for it -- that's entirely different than if he went with a randomly generated set.
If it was randomly generated, the seed would have differed seven seconds prior, and he would have gotten a completely different set of numbers.
But that's exactly the same scenario regardless.
Buying a ticket with automatically generated numbers at 2:47:18 would give different numbers than one with numbers generated at 2:47:25.
So can people now sue that they paid for a ticket based off of 2:47:18's seed, but were given one from 2:47:25's instead?
It depends on when the seed is generated, as I said in my edit while you were replying I guess.
If the seed is generated at the time of purchase (so when he locks it in), then I'd say he has a case, because he had a set of winning numbers generated by a random seed during the eligibility window and a ticket purchased during the eligibility window for this draw.
If the seed is generated at any other time (er, I should say, at the time of printing -- since there'd still be a window otherwise), he has no case, because both the ticket and his winning numbers were generated during the eligibility for the following draw, regardless of when the purchase itself was made.
Fair enough.
Response to edit:
As I said before, I don't feel like him accepting it should matter, because what was he going to do otherwise? Throw the ticket away? Turn back time? He was pretty much stuck.
I completely misread the story. Since the ticket clearly said which draw it would be eligible for, I don't have a lot of sympathy for the guy.....especially since he accepted it.
This was just a cruel twist of fate, unfortunately.
Nah, fucking bullshit, he started the process and committed to the numbers before the deadline. Give the man his fucking money.