A computer expert’s decade-long battle to recover a £600m bitcoin fortune he says has been lost in a council dump has been halted by a judge.
James Howells, 39, launched a legal case to force Newport city council to allow him to search the site to retrieve a lost hard drive containing the bitcoins.
The council sought to strike out the claim, and a judge has ruled in its favour. Sitting as a high court judge, Judge Keyser KC said on Thursday that Howells’s claim had “no realistic prospect of succeeding” if he allowed the case to continue to trial.
He said: “I consider that the particulars of the claim do not show any reasonable grounds for bringing this case. I also consider that the claim would have no realistic prospect of succeeding if it went to trial and that there is no other compelling reason why it should be disposed of at trial.”
The judge said he accepted the council’s argument that it owned the hard drive and Howells was not entitled to try to retrieve it.
He said: “In my judgment, the defendant’s [the council’s] argument is correct and provides a complete answer to the claim.”
Howells appeared at Cardiff civil justice centre in December, where he was represented by lawyers working pro bono.
He said that in the summer of 2013 he accidentally put the hard drive containing his bitcoin wallet in a black bag during an office sort-out and left it in the hall of his house. His then partner is said to have mistaken the bag for rubbish and taken it with her on a trip to the dump, where it has been lost.
Howells quickly realised the mistake and ever since has been asking the council to help him retrieve the hard drive, even offering to share the money with the authority, to no avail.
Dean Armstrong KC, representing Howells, said the search was not for “a needle in a haystack” but a “precise excavation” of a small area that had been identified and would be targeted by expert excavators.
James Goudie KC, for the council, argued that the hard drive had become its property when it entered the landfill site. He said its environmental permits would forbid any attempt to excavate the site for such a search.
Howells has speculated that, by next year, the bitcoins on his hard drive could be worth £1bn and has previously vowed to take his case to the supreme court.
Source: theguardian.com
