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He's in Court right now isn't he?!?
Lost Bitcoins Man is still trying
- Thread starter SexyGreyFox
- Start date
It has. Early days for sure, especially if the court think there is a case warranting hearing. That's why I used the words 'potentially' and 'will be.' Although Newport already have a KC on the case so costs already racking up.
No chance they recover all costs though.
What is that based on?
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Man has ‘finely tuned’ plan to find £500m bitcoin thrown in tip, Cardiff court told
James Howells seeking go-ahead to search for hard drive that was accidentally thrown into landfill in 2013
www.theguardian.com
From the link @I kill Bunnies shared above it looks like they're trying to prevent it from becoming a costly case:
In theory, they can be awarded costs if he's unsuccessful - I had wondered if his potential backers in the recovery venture might be funding the case (and maybe sharing liability for costs) but the article claims it's being taken on by some lawyers on a pro bono basis so I'm not sure how thing are going to work out for him re: costs - how much is this guy worth if he's got a hefty bill to pay?
Yeah this really needs to be outlined as this will be costing Newport residents thousands in lack of funding for everything else due to diverting funds towards their legal battle.
What I'm surprised about - and I've never seen a T&C for using a council supplied tip, but there must be something legally binding that says once you've disposed of your rubbish, the council then becomes the legal owner of it all. The defence here would be that as the rubbish had been dumped at the councils site they would become the new legal owners of the HDD and thus he'd have no further legal right to claim ownership back.
IIRC the legal precedent is long established, once the rubbish is picked up or if you take it to the tip in person, dropped off it's no longer yours.
You effectively are handing over the title of the goods by offering them to the waste collection in the bin at the designated time and place, their collection of it is their acceptance of the offer (if you put in the terms you'd use for retail).
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A few years ago I took a working TV to the incinerator and put it in the large shipping crate.
I bumped into a mate, told him what I'd just put in there and he wanted it.
I went back to the staff who refused to let me have it back citing the Incinerator Rules.
Quite right.
If the bag was all office equipment as he says, it may already have been recycled, disks wiped and sold on with anything else saleable too. The waste operatives have a canny eye for making a few bob.
Exactly as I thought it'd be. Otherwise it's a can of worms when it comes to attempting to retrieve something that has been disposed of - exactly with this case in point.
If that is genuinely the legal standpoint then this should be pretty open and shut. The guy is trying to retrieve something that is no longer legally his, regardless of whether he intentionally threw it out. At that point his only avenue of recourse would be at his ex-girlfriend - but he wouldn't be able to claim the theoretical Bitcoin value, only what a second hand hard drive would cost which going back a decade would be pocket change.
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So the hard drive has been in a tip for 10 years, is there any chance you could retrieve anything from it now?
If he had thrown it out then sure but the ownership of the drive isn't quite so open and shut as he's claiming that his GF threw it out not him so it isn't necessarily just a case of standard T&Cs if he didn't choose hand it to them. The legal principle is apparently "nemo dat quod non habet" or "no one can give what they do not have" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nemo_dat_quod_non_habet but it gets complicated.
An obvious straight forward example here would be stolen goods ending up at auction or in a pawn shop - the owner of the goods didn't agree to the T&Cs someone else did (the thief/fence), but that could also happen accidentally - perhaps an estate sale upon someone's death might accidentally/incorrectly bundle in a borrowed object or and object that was given to someone else in the will.
Of course, it's not that that means he automatically gets to access the site, the council still have objections re: health and safety and environmental stuff but just that the ownership of the drive isn't necessarily as straightforward as that.
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Can they actually prove she threw it out?
Doubt it. It was 10 years ago so chances of a ring camera etc.. are much lower.
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Hmm I suppose that's where things start to get messy - we only have his/her word that he never intentionally threw out the hard drive. I've no idea how quickly he recognised that the drive was disposed of as that might play some bearing - if it was reported swiftly then it might be argued that the item was never intentionally disposed of. If it wasn't reported until many years later (when Bitcoin started to increase in value) I think it would be hard to argue the non-intentional act when you've had ample opportunity to report it.
I was having a chat with my colleague about crypto yesterday, and this came up. She told me she used to work at a landfill site, driving a bulldozer. Those machines are massive, and weigh many tonnes. She thought that a) the chance of actually locating the drive in the first place would be incredibly low and b) it would be completely unusable.
We'll find out soon.
I normally go to bulldozer drivers when I want consulting about data recovery in the 000's of mil
