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NLJ this week: Who’s got the key? Bitcoin, hacking & duties of care

10 June 2022
Issue: 7982 / Categories: Legal News , Cyber , Profession
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What happens if the owner of Bitcoin loses their private key? (And is the owner really the owner?) The courts recently grappled with this perplexing question, as Malcolm Dowden and Owen Afriye, of Squire Patton Boggs, explain in this week’s NLJ

The case, Tulip Trading, lifted the lid on liability and remedies in the ultra-mysterious (at least to the uninitiated) world of crypto. The court set out their reasons for why Tulip Trading were unlikely to establish that the defendants breached their fiduciary duties. It’s a fast-paced area of law with vast realms of landscape still to be mapped..

MOVERS & SHAKERS

Red Lion Chambers—Maurice MacSweeney

Red Lion Chambers—Maurice MacSweeney

Set creates new client and business development role amid growth

Kingsley Napley—Tim Lowles

Kingsley Napley—Tim Lowles

Sports disputes practice launchedwith partner appointment

mfg Solicitors—Tom Evans

mfg Solicitors—Tom Evans

Tax and succession planning offering expands with returning partner

NEWS
The rank of King’s Counsel (KC) has been awarded to 96 barristers, and no solicitors, in the latest silk round
Neurotechnology is poised to transform contract law—and unsettle it. Writing in NLJ this week, Harry Lambert, barrister at Outer Temple Chambers and founder of the Centre for Neurotechnology & Law, and Dr Michelle Sharpe, barrister at the Victorian Bar, explore how brain–computer interfaces could both prove and undermine consent
Comparators remain the fault line of discrimination law. In this week's NLJ, Anjali Malik, partner at Bellevue Law, and Mukhtiar Singh, barrister at Doughty Street Chambers, review a bumper year of appellate guidance clarifying how tribunals should approach ‘actual’ and ‘evidential’ comparators. A new six-stage framework stresses a simple starting point: identify the treatment first
In cross-border divorces, domicile can decide everything. In NLJ this week, Jennifer Headon, legal director and head of international family, Isobel Inkley, solicitor, and Fiona Collins, trainee solicitor, all at Birketts LLP, unpack a Court of Appeal ruling that re-centres nuance in jurisdiction disputes. The court held that once a domicile of choice is established, the burden lies on the party asserting its loss
Early determination is no longer a novelty in arbitration. In NLJ this week, Gustavo Moser, arbitration specialist lawyer at Lexis+, charts the global embrace of summary disposal powers, now embedded in the Arbitration Act 1996 and mirrored worldwide. Tribunals may swiftly dismiss claims with ‘no real prospect of succeeding’, but only if fairness is preserved
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