The Atlantic Lottery Corp. is facing a second lawsuit over a scratch-and-win ticket, this one filed by a Newfoundland man claiming nearly $1 million in prize money.

Frank Tizzard, 58, of St. John's is suing in the Newfoundland Supreme Court for breach of contract to try to get the money he claims to have won fair and square.

His issue is nearly identical to that of Doris Yaremko of Beresford, N.B., who had the same kind of ticket and has filed suit in small claims court for the $8,000 prize on her ticket.

The game that both would-be winners played is called Special 8. Players have to scratch the plastic-like covering off of a picture of two dice. Under the rules, if the dots shown on the dice add up to eight, the player wins a cash prize. 

Tizzard, who is unemployed, on welfare and suffering from a serious heart condition, was thrilled one night last spring when he scratched his Special 8 ticket and added up the numbers. The prize was worth $888,888 — or so he thought. His ticket had a picture of a die with two dots and another with six.

But when he tried to cash it in, the Atlantic Lottery Corp. insisted the ticket was not a winner.

Tizzard's lawyer Ed Ring says the ticket has a misprint. "In the printed words above and below each die, above the six die there was the word six, and above and below the two die, the word three."

It all sounds awfully familiar to Yaremko. In February, she bought a ticket, scratched the same numbers but again the words didn't match. "They just don't want to say that it's a misprint and they're trying to make it pass as if we scratched another dot and it is not so."

Spokesman Robert Bourgeois said the lottery corporation has other ways of checking winning tickets and the validation codes on both tickets say they're not winners.