BARNSTABLE, Mass. (AP) – A Superior Court judge declared a mistrial Wednesday after a jury could not reach a verdict in a dispute over ownership of a $4 million Massachusetts Lottery scratch ticket.

The civil jury in Barnstable Superior Court said it was hopelessly deadlocked after nearly four days of deliberations, according to lawyers from both sides. Unless the sides negotiate a settlement, there could be another trial.

Former Falmouth convenience store clerk Julie Prive has been collecting winnings on the ticket since 2002. Lottery officials say they will keep paying unless a court rules otherwise.

Prive had regularly collected discarded tickets and entered them in the lottery’s second-chance game designed to prevent litter. While double-checking the used tickets, she said she found a winner worth $4 million. But Raymond MacDonald and Monica Hertz claim the winning ticket – No. 93 in the book of $10 tickets – was among the 45 tickets they bought that day, May 17, according to their lawyer, Leigh-Ann Patterson.

MacDonald, a retiree, testified that he plays the lottery two or three times a day, spending upward of $100. He won a $2 million jackpot from a scratch ticket in 1997.

MacDonald has a distinctive “scratch signature” that would make it possible to show he once had held the ticket, his lawyers said.

Attorneys for Julie Prive and her husband, David, said ownership of the ticket is not clear cut.

Although the Prives told the lottery commission that Julie had found the ticket, she told a Cape Cod Times reporter at the time that she bought the ticket after she got off work.

MacDonald and Hertz have tried to stop the Prives from collecting their winnings – $200,000 a year for 20 years before taxes. So far, the Prives have been paid $600,000, before taxes.