A British judge has ruled against a man who wants to excavate a landfill where he claims a hard drive with access to thousands of bitcoins was mistakenly dumped more than 11 years ago.
Since 2013, James Howells has been waiting to recover a portable hard drive that he claims contains the private key to the cryptocurrency he says he mined in 2009. At the time, the value of one bitcoin had just surpassed $1,000, which made 7,500 bitcoins worth $7.5 million.
The supposed number of bitcoins has changed a bit, and Howells now says he lost 8,000 bitcoins. The price of bitcoin exceeded $100,000.
Superior Court Judge Keyser KC ruled judgmentagreeing with the defendant in the case Howells v Newport City Council. The judge ruled that Howells has no real chance of success at trial. Howells sought “an order for the defendant to hand over the hard drive or allow his team of experts to excavate the landfill to find it, and (in the alternative) compensation equal to the value of the Bitcoin he can no longer access.”
The landfill authority is the owner of the garbage
According to the ruling, excavation of the landfill would release harmful substances into the environment, endangering residents with “potentially serious risks that pose public health and environmental problems.”
The judge found “no reasonable grounds for bringing this case,” stating that it has “no realistic prospect of succeeding if it went to trial and that there is no other compelling reason why it should be resolved at trial.” The judge granted summary judgment to the defendant, dismissing the lawsuit.
The ruling cites the Pollution Control Act 1974, which states that “anything handed over to the authority by another person in the course of using the premises shall belong to the authority and may be dealt with accordingly.” Howells “alleged that article 14(6)(c) is limited to saying that everything delivered will belong to the authority, but does not say that it ceases to belong to its former owner,” the ruling says. The judge disagreed, writing that “the words ‘shall belong to the authority’ have no nuance or restriction.”
The judge found no reason to determine that the defendant’s retention of the hard drive was “unconscionable” under the law. “In my opinion, there would be no realistic prospect of the defendant’s retention of the hard drive being found to be unconscionable. The defendant was not retaining it for profit or because she wanted it. She retained it because it was buried in a landfill.” , says the sentence.
Prescription
The lawsuit has also prescribed six years because Howells “knew the material facts of his claim in November 2013, but did not initiate the procedure until May 2024,” the ruling says.
The judge did not need to rule on whether the hard drive actually contains access to bitcoin, saying that “the only relevant issues in this case concern ownership and access rights to the hard drive.” Howells attempted to access the Newport, Wales landfill starting in November 2013, but local officials refused. It says the hard drive is 2½ inches and has a wallet.dat file that contains a private key that may allow access to the bitcoin.
The council said the excavation would breach the terms of its license with NRW (Natural Resources Agency for Wales), cause risks to the health and safety of staff, risk of damage from ground movement during or after the excavation works excavation, and would prevent the council from “discharging its statutory waste disposal functions while the site is being excavated.”
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