A British judge has ruled against a man who wanted to dig up a landfill where he says a hard drive providing access to thousands of bitcoins was mistakenly left behind more than 11 years ago.
Since 2013, James Howells has hoped to recover a laptop hard drive that he believes contains the private key to the cryptocurrency he says he mined in 2009. Ars wrote about it at the time: noting that the value of a bitcoin had just exceeded $1,000, or 7,500 bitcoins worth $7.5 million.
The alleged number of bitcoins has changed a bit, with Howells now claiming to have lost 8,000 bitcoins. The price of bitcoin exceeded $100,000 last month and stood at $95,636 last Friday, or $765 million for 8,000 bitcoins.
High Court Justice Keyser KC delivered his decision last week, siding with the accused in Howells v. Newport City Council. Howells has no realistic chance of success at trial, the judge ruled. Howells sought “an order that the defendant either deliver the hard drive, or allow his team of experts to search the landfill for it, and (in the alternative) compensation equivalent to the value of the Bitcoin to which he cannot no longer access. »
The landfill authority owns the waste
The council said excavation of the landfill would leak harmful substances into the environment, putting residents at risk with “potentially serious risks that raise public health and environmental concerns”, the council said. judgement.
The judge found no “reasonable grounds to bring this case”, saying there was “no realistic chance of success if the case went to trial and there was no other compelling reason to which it should be settled at trial.” He granted summary judgment in favor of the defendant, dismissing the claim.
The judgment cites the Pollution Control Act 1974, which states that “anything delivered to the authority by any other person in the course of use of the facilities belongs to the authority and may be dealt with accordingly “. Howells “argued that section 14(6)(c) merely says that anything so delivered will belong to the authority, but does not say that it will cease to belong to its former owner”, the ruling said . The judge disagreed, writing that “the words ‘shall belong to the authority’ are without qualification and without qualification.”
The judge found no reason to determine that the defendant’s retention of the hard drive was “unconscionable” under the law. “In my view, there would be no realistic prospect of finding that the defendant’s retention of the hard drive was impermissible. The defendant did not keep it for profit or because he wanted to. He kept it because it was buried in a landfill,” the judgment states.
Limitation period
The claim is also barred by the six-year statute of limitations because Howells “knew the facts material to its claim in November 2013, but did not commence proceedings until May 2024,” the ruling states.
The judge did not need to rule on whether the hard drive actually contains access to bitcoin, saying “the only relevant questions in this case concern ownership and access rights to the hard drive” . Howells sought access to the landfill in Newport, Wales, from November 2013, but local authorities refused. He says the hard drive is 2½ inches and contains a wallet.dat file containing a private key that can allow access to bitcoin.
The council said the excavations would breach the terms of its license with NRW (Natural Resources Body for Wales), cause risks to the health and safety of staff, risk damage from ground movement during or after construction works. excavation and would prevent the council from “unloading”.[ing] its legal functions of waste disposal while the site is excavated.
