RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven - seven seconds. It goes by pretty fast, but it's something Canadian Joel Ifergen has been thinking about for the past seven years. In 2008, in Quebec, he bought two lottery tickets. One happened to be the winning ticket. And it should have earned him the jackpot of 27 million Canadian dollars or just over 21 million U.S. dollars. But he didn't win. The ticket was printed seven seconds after the draw closed, and his win was ruled invalid. Now seven years later, the Supreme Court of Canada has refused to hear his appeal to try and overturn that ruling. Mr. Ifergen was, understandably, disappointed by the ruling and blamed Quabec's lottery machines for being too slow. Even if his appeal had been granted, he would've had to share the prize with another player who also had a winning ticket. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.