A British man sued the government as the 8,000BTC hard drive was lost in a garbage dump and could not be recovered

UK government hit with largest-ever compensation: 647 million magnesium.

WalesOnline reported that James Howells, a man from Newport, England and an IT engineer, mistakenly threw away a hard drive containing 8,000 Bitcoins as rubbish due to a misunderstanding in 2013. At the time, the Bitcoins were worth less than 1 million pounds. It is now worth over £500 million.

Since then, James Howells has been trying to recover the hard drive from a landfill owned by Newport City Council, but the council has repeatedly refused his requests to excavate the landfill, highlighting the limitations of its environmental permit.

For this reason, James Howells has sued Newport City Council, claiming 495,314,800 pounds in Bitcoin losses, and proposed that he can dig up the landfill himself without the city council bearing the cost. He also promised that if the Bitcoins are successfully recovered, The council will be given a 10 per cent return and the court will hear the lawsuit in December.

James Howells said the lawsuit was an attempt to pressure the council into digging up the landfill and he had assembled a team of experts, including the council's former landfill director, to improve the chances of successfully recovering the hard drive. The team is committed to adhering to environmental standards and has the ability to address hazardous waste issues in landfills.

Council lawyers argued that the council now had legal ownership of the hard drive as it had been dumped in a rubbish tip, but James Howells' legal team rejected that claim, stressing that there was never any intention to give up the hard drive or the intellectual property rights on it.

It is reported that James Howells met with city council representatives in 2013, but has been ignored since then. For the past ten years, he has devoted himself full-time to the plan to find the hard drive and gave up his IT job. If the hard drive is recovered, he has reached an agreement with investors. The agreement will allow him to receive 30% of the Bitcoins, with the remainder distributed to team members and the city council.

A spokesman for the city council responded that they followed a strict monitoring and reporting system and believed that James Howells' claim argument was "weak". He criticized Howells for shifting the focus and wasting public resources. However, James Howells said that unless the court determines that he has no right to recover, Otherwise he will press on and with this lawsuit, he is ready to go to the Supreme Court and take the case to the end.