A British judge has ruled against a man who wants to dig up a landfill where he says a hard drive with access to thousands of bitcoins was wrongly disposed of more than 11 years ago. Since 2013, James Howells has been hoping to recover his laptop hard drive. contains the private key for the cryptocurrency which is said to have been mined in 2009. Ars wrote about it at the time, which is noting that the value of bitcoin has just passed $1,000, making 7,500 bitcoins worth $7.5 million. The alleged amount of bitcoins has changed a bit, with Howells now saying he lost 8,000 bitcoins. The price of bitcoin exceeded $100,000 last month and was worth more than $95,636 last Friday, or $765 million for 8,000 bitcoins. Superior Court Judge Keyser KC issued a ruling last week, siding with the defendants in Howells v Newport City Council. Howells had no realistic chance of success at trial, the judge ruled. Howells sought “an order that the defendant submit the hard drive or allow a team of experts to dig the landfill to find it, and (in the alternative) compensation equal to the value of the Bitcoins that can no longer be accessed.” -hazardous substances can escape into the environment, endangering citizens with “serious potential risks that cause public health problems. and environmental concerns,” the decision said. The judge found no “sufficient reason to bring this case,” saying there was “no realistic prospect of it going to trial and no other reason why it should be thrown out. in court.” The ruling cited the Pollution Control Act of 1974, which states that “anything sent to the authority by another person in the course of using the facility shall be to the authority and may be dealt with accordingly.” Howells “submitted that section 14 (6) (c) only says that anything delivered will become the owner but does not say that it will cease to be the former owner,” the decision said. The judge disagreed, writing that “the words ‘shall belong to the authorities’ are unqualified and unrestricted.” The judge found no reason to determine that the defendant’s possession of the hard drive was “unconscionable” under the law. “In my opinion, there is no real prospect of a finding that the retention of the defendant’s Hard Drive cannot be done. The defendant did not retain it for profit or because it wanted to. It retained it because it was buried in a landfill,” the judgment said. Statute of Limitations The claim is also prohibited by statute The six-year limitation is because Howells “knew the material facts for his claim in November 2013 but did not start the process until May 2024,” the decision said. The judge did not need to determine whether the hard drive actually contained access to the bitcoins, saying that “the only relevant issue in this case is the ownership of, and the right to access to, the Hard Drive.” Howells has been requesting access to the landfill site in Newport, Wales, since November 2013 but local officials have refused. They said the hard drive was 2½ inches in size and had a wallet.dat file that contained a private key that could enable access to bitcoin. for the staff, the risk of damage from soil movement during or after the excavation work, and prevent the council from “discharg[ing] statutory waste disposal function when the site is excavated.”
