- James Howells mistakenly threw away the hard drive containing 8,000 Bitcoin, which he mined in 2009 and is now valued at about $770 million
- Newport council asked the judge to strike out Mr Howells' legal action to access the landfill or get £495 million in compensation
- In the ruling, Judge Keyser KC said the claim had no "reasonable grounds" and that there was no "no realistic prospect" of succeeding at a full trial
Judge Keyser KC, the Circuit Commercial Judge for Wales in the United Kingdom, has dashed the hopes of James Howells, an IT engineer from Newport, who threw away his hard drive containing more than $770 million worth of Bitcoin.
Howells mistakenly threw away the hard drive containing 8,000 Bitcoin, which he mined in 2009 and is now valued at about $770 million. The hard drive eventually ended up in a landfill.
He had instituted a lawsuit arguing that his partner mistakenly binned the hard drive containing a Bitcoin wallet and requested access to the landfill to recover the bitcoin.
However, according to the BBC, Newport council asked the judge to strike out Mr Howells' legal action to access the landfill or get £495 million in compensation.
In the ruling, Judge Keyser KC said the claim had no "reasonable grounds" and that there was no "no realistic prospect" of succeeding at a full trial.
"The case being struck out at the earliest hearing doesn't even give me the opportunity to explain myself or an opportunity for justice in any shape or form. There was so much more that could have been explained in a full trial, and that's what I was expecting," he said in reaction to the decision.
Howells has been unrelenting in his quest to recover the drive. For years, he has repeatedly asked the council for permission to access the landfill and promised to share the Bitcoin with the council if it is found.
“The council has been refusing me permission to search, or even refusing to agree to an in-person meeting with the council leaders so that we can discuss the situation in good faith for over 10 years now,” he said in 2024.
But the ruling has now brought the case to an end.
Expressing his disappointment with the ruling, he said: “My case was not given the proper level of consideration that the value of the asset in question deserved and I feel that the UK court system in general has failed me in the fact that I have not even been given the opportunity for justice at full trial.”
Despite the unfavourable ruling, Howells said the silver lining for him was that his ownership of the Bitcoin hard drive was not questioned during the hearing, which he said was an important acknowledgement.
“It will pave the way for me to take appropriate steps to monetise my ownership of the 8,000 Bitcoin digital assets in the future via potential tokenisation avenues,” he said.
Denied access due to environmental concerns
Over the years, Howells repeatedly asked the council for access to the landfill, but the council denied him access. In October 2024, the council said it told Howells “multiple times that excavation is not possible” under its environmental permit due to the “huge negative environmental impact on the surrounding area.”
However, Howells said the environmental concerns the council raised are unsubstantiated. He argued that the council violated environmental regulations and claimed “100 independently verified pieces of evidence” to support his allegations.
“If you look at the Natural Resources Wales compliance reports for the previous four years, Newport City Council has been breaching their landfill permit by leaching arsenic, asbestos, ammonium nitrate and methane gasses into the local environment,” he said.
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