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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

Muckle LLP—Ella Johnson

Muckle LLP—Ella Johnson

Real estate dispute resolution team welcomes newly qualified solicitor

Morr & Co—Dennis Phillips

Morr & Co—Dennis Phillips

International private client team appoints expert in Spanish law

NLJ Career Profile: Stefan Borson, McCarthy Denning

NLJ Career Profile: Stefan Borson, McCarthy Denning

Stefan Borson, football finance expert head of sport at McCarthy Denning, discusses returning to the law digging into the stories behind the scenes

NEWS
Paper cyber-incident plans are useless once ransomware strikes, argues Jack Morris of Epiq in NLJ this week
In this week's NLJ, Robert Hargreaves and Lily Johnston of York St John University examine the Employment Rights Bill 2024–25, which abolishes the two-year qualifying period for unfair-dismissal claims
Writing in NLJ this week, Manvir Kaur Grewal of Corker Binning analyses the collapse of R v Óg Ó hAnnaidh, where a terrorism charge failed because prosecutors lacked statutory consent. The case, she argues, highlights how procedural safeguards—time limits, consent requirements and institutional checks—define lawful state power
Michael Zander KC, emeritus professor at LSE, revisits his long-forgotten Crown Court Study (1993), which surveyed 22,000 participants across 3,000 cases, in the first of a two-part series for NLJ
Getty Images v Stability AI Ltd [2025] EWHC 2863 (Ch) was a landmark test of how UK law applies to AI training—but does it leave key questions unanswered, asks Emma Kennaugh-Gallagher of Mewburn Ellis in NLJ this week
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