Recap: The sad case of James Howells, the man who has spent the last decade trying to recover a hard drive containing $713 million worth of Bitcoin (at the time of writing) from a local landfill, may have come to an end. He sued his local council for the right to search the site last year, but a judge has thrown out the case before it went to full trial at the High Court.
Howells has been unsuccessfully trying to persuade the council of Newport, Wales, to allow him to dig for the 2.5-inch drive for years. He even promised to donate 10%, or around $71 million, of the Bitcoin to the local community if allowed to carry out a successful search.
In October, Howells sued the city for the right to search the landfill or pay him £495 million ($607 million) in compensation. He claimed in court that he has a "finely tuned plan" to recover the component, and that its position has been narrowed down to a small area.
But the High Court judge in the case was not swayed by Howells' argument. Newport council had asked Judge Keyser KC to strike out the legal action, which he has now done.
Judge Keyser KC reasoned that there were no "reasonable grounds" for bringing the case and "no realistic prospect" of succeeding at a full trial.
"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.
Newport council's lawyers previously said that Howells has no legal claim to the drive, and that anything that goes into the landfill goes into the council's ownership. The judge has accepted this argument.
Howells said he was "very upset" about the decision, which he called a "kick in the teeth."
"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.
The landfill holds more than 1.4 million tons of waste, writes the BBC. Howells said he has narrowed the drive's area down to a section containing 100,000 tons. He believes the Bitcoin on the drive will be worth £1 billion ($1.2 billion) next year.
Howells quit his job to focus on the search full time. He has hired a team of data recovery engineers who, like his lawyers, are working pro bono – there are questions over whether the data on the drive would still be accessible after more than a decade of sitting under a pile of rotting garbage.
As for why he just doesn't give up, Howells said he could "spend the rest of my life working nine to five and thinking about [the fortune] every day," so he might as well keep trying to recover it.
For those who've never heard the full story, Howells had two 2.5-inch hard drives stored in a drawer in 2013, one of which he intended to get rid of and another that had a digital wallet with 7,500 Bitcoin. He put the drive containing the crypto in a black trash bag during an office sort-out and left it in the hall of his house. His partner assumed it was there to be thrown away, so she took the bag to the local landfill, where it's been ever since.
Judge refuses to let man search landfill for his lost $713 million Bitcoin hard drive
