YAN YU YING v. LEUNG WING HEI

CAMP 246 /2024, [2025] HKCA 971

On appeal from [2024] HKCFI 1770

IN THE HIGH COURT OF THE

HONG KONG SPECIAL ADMINISTRATIVE REGION

COURT OF APPEAL

MISCELLANEOUS PROCEEDINGS NO 246 OF 2024

(ON AN INTENDED APPEAL FROM HCA NO 2295 OF 2019)

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J U D G M E N T

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Hon Kwan VP (giving the Judgment of the Court):

1.  This is the plaintiff’s renewed application for leave to appeal against the decision of DHCJ Phoebe Man (“the Judge”) dated 23 July 2024 (“Decision”) in HCA 2295/2019 dismissing her application for the issuance of a letter of request to the Superior Court of California, County of Santa Clara, the United States of America and/or the United States District Court, Northern District of California, USA, for the production by Google LLC (“Google”) in California in USA of the documents specified in the schedule annexed to the plaintiff’s summons dated 21 November 2023 (“Summons”) (as amended at the hearing before the Judge on 13 June 2024) (“Amended Summons”).

2.  Having considered the plaintiff’s statement dated 23 December 2024 and the defendant’s skeleton argument dated 6 January 2025, as well as the papers before us (including the evidence filed in support of and in opposition to the Summons), we consider it appropriate to determine the leave application on the basis of written submissions without an oral hearing pursuant to Order 59, rule 2A(5)(a) of the Rules of the High Court (Cap 4A) (“RHC”).

Factual background

3.  The facts of this case have been succinctly summarised by K Yeung J in his decision dated 7 June 2022 ([2022] 3 HKLRD 270) (on the plaintiff’s application for an interlocutory injunction) and adopted by the Judge in §5 of the Decision.  We reproduce K Yeung J’s summary below for ease of reference:

“4. The dispute between the parties relates to 999.9900261 Bitcoins (the ‘Subject Bitcoins’)^[1]. P says that D has stolen them from her. D’s case is that P transferred them to him in exchange for 885,210.866 of D’s The Public Coin (the ‘TPC’) under a swap agreement reached between them in March 2018 (the ‘Swap Agreement’). TPC is said to be another and a newer type of cryptocurrency.

5. In August 2018, P reported her alleged loss of the Subject Bitcoins to the police. In September 2018, D was arrested.

6. On 12 December 2019, P took out the writ herein. The claim is based on fraud and internet theft. She seeks amongst others restitution of the Subject Bitcoins, a declaration that D holds them and all assets derived from them in unjust enrichment or on trust for her, or damages in the alternative.

7. The Injunction Summons first came before Lisa Wong J on 10 January 2020. It was adjourned for substantive argument (subsequently fixed to take place on 25 April 2022 with 2 days reserved, i.e. the present hearing).

8. When before Her Ladyship on that occasion, P made an application for interim-interim relief. It was refused.

9. Subsequently D was charged and prosecuted for the alleged theft of the Subject Bitcoins.  His trial took place in the District Court between late October and early November 2020 before Deputy District Judge Colin Wong (the ‘Criminal Trial’, the ‘Learned Deputy District Judge’).  P gave evidence as one of the prosecution witnesses.  D also chose to testify.  A number of expert witnesses were also called.  On 4 December 2020, D was acquitted of all charges he faced.”

4.  Essentially, as can be seen from the summary above, whilst the plaintiff alleges that the defendant had misappropriated the Subject Bitcoins from her, the defendant’s case is that the plaintiff had transferred the Subject Bitcoins in exchange for 885,210.866 of TPC from the Defendant, under the Swap Agreement allegedly reached between them on 1 March 2018.

5.  The defendant avers that the existence of the Swap Agreement and the details of the transactions were recorded in the conversation between the plaintiff and the defendant in an instant messaging App called Secret-Message (“SEC-M”).  This is denied by the plaintiff, who says that she had no knowledge about SEC-M and that the messages on SEC-M are fabricated.

6.  During the Criminal Trial, the defendant adduced screenshots from the SEC-M (“SEC-M Screenshots”) with expert evidence, showing details of the transactions between the plaintiff and the defendant. The prosecution adduced evidence that the SEC-M Screenshots could have been forged.  In acquitting the defendant in the Criminal Trial, DDJ Colin Wong accepted that the SEC-M Screenshots were accurate record of correspondence between the plaintiff and the defendant.

7.  On 21 November 2023, the plaintiff took out the Summons for the issuance of a letter of request for the production by Google of the documents specified in the schedule annexed to the Summons.

8.  The documents requested by the plaintiff (as specified in the schedule annexed to the Summons, which was amended by the Amended Summons) (together “Documents”) are the following:

(1)  Record of any and all email messages received by lwp0303@gmail.com^[2] in July 2017^[3], including the original message file and all relevant metadata, including (without limitation) to the message(s)’s Message ID:, Created at:, From:, To:, Received: [date and time] information, subject, read/unread status, and (where applicable) date deleted, whether in the “inbox” folder, “spam mail” folder, “junk mail” folder, “mail trash bin” folder or any other folder.

(2)  Record of any and all email messages received by lwp0303@gmail.com from the email address send@sec-m.com or any other email from any sender purporting itself to be “SEC-M”, “Secret-Message” or “密安訊” or “密安讯”, including the original message file and all relevant metadata, including (without limitation) the message(s)’s Created at:, From:, To:, Received: [date and time] information, subject, read/unread status, and (where applicable) date deleted, whether in the “inbox” folder, “spam mail” folder, “junk mail” folder, “mail trash bin” folder or any other folder.

This record specifically excludes, to the extent applicable as requestor is the account holder and is seeking her own information, any information that is prohibited by the Stored Communications Act. 18 U.S.C. § 2701, et seq. (“SCA”).  Specifically, while the subject lines of emails are content under the SCA, the requestor is seeking her own records, which is permissible under the SCA. 18 U.S.C §2701(c)(2).

The Decision

9.  By the Decision, the Judge dismissed the Amended Summons after finding that the plaintiff had failed to discharge her burden in showing that: 

(1)  it is necessary and in the interests of justice to obtain the Documents; and

(2)  the Documents exist and are likely to be in the possession of Google.

10.  In respect of whether it is necessary and in the interests of justice to obtain the Documents:

(1)  The Judge first pointed out that the Documents sought may be relevant in resolving the “blue tick issue”, namely, as the defendant has produced a screenshot showing a blue tick against the plaintiff’s email address in the SEC-M app, it seems to indicate that the plaintiff had registered for and verified a SEC-M account (“Blue Tick Issue”).  This would support the defence that there was a Swap Agreement and that the plaintiff had messaged with the defendant on the SEC-M app (Decision, §§16, 17).

(2)  However, the Judge was not satisfied that the answer from Google would assist the court in the resolution of the Blue Tick Issue because:

(a)  Under the present formulation of the request, the plaintiff only asks for records of any and all email messages in July 2017, “whether in the ‘inbox’ folder, ‘spam mail’ folder, ‘junk mail’ folder, ‘mail trash bin’ folder or any other folder”.  It does not deal with the situation where an email has been deleted from the mail trash bin.  As such, it leaves open for the defendant to argue that the plaintiff could have deleted the email herself from the mail trash bin (Decision, §17(a)).

(b)  Thus, even if no email can be found by Google, before one can reach the conclusion sought by the plaintiff (ie that there was never any email sent from SEC-M that reached the plaintiff’s email address), there would need to be acknowledgments from Google regarding the following matters:

(i)   Google has not deleted any emails belonging to the plaintiff’s email account since 2017^[4].

(ii)  Even if an account holder has permanently deleted an email from his/her account, Google would still retain a copy of it.

Such acknowledgments are currently not within the formulation of the draft letter of request and will thus unlikely be provided by Google (Decision, §17(b)).

(c)  The plaintiff cannot just seek what satisfies her case only without regard to any possible rebuttal that the defendant is likely to have on the interpretation of the information sought (Decision, §17(c)).

(d)  The likelihood of Google, an international conglomerate, willingly divulge information concerning its internal policy that it has chosen to not made available generally to the public, is unknown (Decision, §17(d)). 

(e)  Conversely, if Google finds an email in the plaintiff’s email account that was sent from SEC-M, as accepted by the plaintiff’s counsel, the plaintiff would still run her case on the basis that she never used SEC-M.  In that case, the court would still need to decide between the different expert opinions and the credibility of the plaintiff and the defendant (Decision, §17(e)).

(f)  Accordingly, whatever the outcome, the court is not assisted, as neither possibility would determine the Blue Tick Issue.  It is entirely foreseeable there is a likelihood that the letter of request sought would generate more questions than it would answer, and the answers to the questions generated are not readily available or easily obtained (Decision, §§17(f) and 18).

(g)  In the circumstances, although the Documents sought may be relevant, the Judge found that the plaintiff has not shown it is material, or necessary in the interests of justice to obtain the Documents (Decision, §19).

11.  In respect of whether the Documents exist and are likely to be in Google’s possession:

(1)  The Judge first pointed out that the burden is on the plaintiff to demonstrate that the Documents would still be available after seven years, and not that there is no evidence to show that it is no longer available (Decision, §20).

(2)  The standard reply from Google seems to suggest that an account holder can simply access his/her own data stored within his/her account, and that there is no restriction for an account holder to access the information in his/her own account.  Such standard reply suggests that whatever data that is available to the account holder will be within the control of him/her.  The other content from the standard reply seems to relate to a request from someone other than the account holder to access the data (Decision, §21). 

(3)  Whilst the plaintiff’s counsel relied heavily on the opinion of his expert, Mr Ronald Pong, on the likelihood of such emails having been retained, Mr Pong is not an expert on Google’s policy on the retention of emails.  All Mr Pong could do is to speculate, using general knowledge on why it might be possible that such emails still exist.  The court cannot accept such opinion to be evidence showing the existence of such information on Google’s part.  There might be various considerations by Google on how and for what period they would retain emails, or emails that had been hard-deleted^[5] by an account holder.  Technological limits may not be the only considerations taken into account by Google (Decision, §22).

(4)  The plaintiff relied upon three US cases in support of her contention that the Documents sought are still in existence: (a) Federal Trade Commission v Ameridebt, Inc. (No. C-05-80253 misc JSW (EDL), 31 January 2006); (b) Optiver Australia Pty. Ltd & Anor v Tibra Trading Pty (No. C 12-80242 EJD (PSG), 23 January 2013); and (c) Rocky Mountain Bank v Google Inc (No. 5:09-CV-04385-JW).  However, none of the US cases relied upon can be taken as evidence of the existence of the documents or information sought from Google:

(a)  The context of Ameridebt is different from the present case.  The email account in question belonged to a third party.  The focus of that case was also not on the existence of such documents.

(b)  In Optiver Australia, the party seeking disclosure is the opponent of the account holder.  The focus of that application was not on the existence of the documents but on whether disclosure was prohibited under certain US law. 

(c)  In any event, it is not apparent as to whether Google was able to produce the information sought in those two cases.  The plaintiff cannot rely on the terms of an order having been made in those cases as evidence of Google’s retention policy and that the Documents sought are still in existence.

(d)  Rocky Mountain Bank also does not assist the plaintiff, as Google was only asked to provide information on 23 September 2009 in respect of an email received by a user on 12 August 2009 and deleted on 19 September 2009(Decision, §§23 to 30).

(5)  As such, the Judge found that the plaintiff failed to demonstrate that the Documents exist and are likely to be in the possession of Google.

12.  Having reached the above conclusions, the Judge did not find it necessary to deal with the defendant’s complaint that there was undue delay on the plaintiff’s part in taking out the application for the issue of a letter of request.  In any event, this point was not heavily relied upon by the defendant as there was no submission on whether the alleged delay has caused real prejudice which cannot be compensated by costs (Decision, §§32 to 35). 

The application for leave to appeal

13.  The plaintiff was not satisfied with the Decision, and sought leave to appeal from the Judge.  On 9 December 2024, the Judge gave a decision refusing to grant leave to appeal, holding that that the intended appeal has no reasonable prospect of success ([2024] HKCFI 3524) (“Leave Decision”).

14.  By a summons dated 23 December 2024 filed in the Court of Appeal (“Leave Summons”), the plaintiff renewed her application for leave to appeal.  The four proposed grounds of appeal raised by the plaintiff in the draft notice of appeal annexed to the Leave Summons (“Draft NoA”) are the same as the grounds considered by the Judge in the Leave Decision and are as follows:

(1)  Ground 1: The court erred in holding that the plaintiff “has not shown that it is material, or necessary in the interests of justice” for the letter of request to be issued, as the Documents requested are directly relevant to resolving the Blue Tick Issue, and so necessary in the interest of justice.

(a)  If records of a SEC-M confirmation email are found, this supports the authenticity of the SEC-M Screenshots (Draft NoA, §1.1).

(b)  Conversely, if the records are such as to exclude the possibility of the plaintiff having deleted a SEC-M confirmation email, for example by showing records of her deletion of other emails in July 2017, this detracts from the authenticity of the SEC-M Screenshots (Draft NoA, §1.2).

(c)  In this respect, the Judge erred in the Decision at §17(a) in that §1 of the Amended Summons does cover the situation “where an email has been deleted from the mail trash bin”, in that the confirmation email must have been received in July 2017 before such “hard” deletion (Draft NoA, §1.3).

(d)  The Judge further erred in the Decision at §§17(e) to 17(f) in that the Blue Tick Issue is a distinct issue from the plaintiff’s factual case that she never heard of or used SEC-M (Draft NoA, §1.4).

(e)  The plaintiff’s burden is not to show that it is decisive of the plaintiff’s overall case or outcome of the trial, but instead that the requested documents assist in the resolution of the Blue Tick Issue (a matter argued exclusively between the experts, without direct evidence from the plaintiff or the defendant) (Draft NoA, §1.5).

(2)  Ground 2: The Judge erred in §31 of the Decision in holding that the plaintiff “has failed to demonstrate that the documents exist and are likely to be in the possession of the person from whom production is sought” in that:

(a)  The records requested in §1 of the Amended Summons, namely “records of any and all email messages received by lwp0303@gmail.com in July 2017” exist and are likely to be in the possession of Google (Draft NoA, §2.1). 

(b)  The Judge erred in finding in §§21 and 29 of the Decision that “whatever data that is available to the account holder would be within the control of him/her” in that, in Rocky Mountain Bank, Google had by way of court filing provided to the court data about a message which was “auto-deleted and is no longer available to the user”, ie more than what is available or within the control of the account holder (Draft NoA, §2.2).

(3)  Ground 3: The court erred in rejecting the opinion of Mr Pong:

(a)  concerning Google’s big data business model on the basis that he is not “an expert on Google’s policy on the retention of emails” in §22 of the Decision.  Unlike the defendant’s expert Mr Alan Jeffries, Mr Pong did not speculate on Google’s internal policy.  Instead, he pointed out the commercial incentives for international conglomerates such as Google to collect and retain large amounts of data; and

(b)  concerning deletion as “speculation” on the basis of “general knowledge” in §22 of the Decision.  Deletion in relation to computer files is a technical concept and what a user experiences as deletion (even “hard delete”) is not equivalent to the disappearance of data from Google’s computers.

Both of these matters are within Mr Pong (and Mr Jeffries’s) agreed expertise on digital and forensic investigations.  In the absence of positive contradiction by Mr Jeffries, Mr Pong’s opinions on the above matters should be accepted (Draft NoA, §3).

(4)  Ground 4: To the extent necessary:

(a)  The Judge erred in rejecting the plaintiff’s US legal advisors, Messrs. Kronenberger Rosenfeld, LLP’s uncontradicted opinion that there is no reason to believe Google was unable or unwilling to comply with the subpoenas filed in relation to Gmail records in the Optiver Australia case (Draft NoA, §4.1).

(b)  The Judge erred in giving Mr Jeffries’ opinion any weight in considering the application in that his opinion was abandoned by the defendant at the hearing in favour of another Google policy annexed to the defendant’s skeleton submissions without leave to adduce new evidence.  Given such abandonment, Mr Jeffries’ opinion that “Google would unlikely retain records of email which had been deleted 7 years ago in 2017” has no basis and should not be given any weight (Draft NoA, §4.2).

Discussion

15.  The test for granting leave to appeal under section 14AA of the High Court Ordinance (Cap 4) is well settled.  Leave to appeal shall not be granted unless the intended appeal has a reasonable prospect of success, or there is some other reason in the interests of justice why the appeal shall be heard.  For this purpose, reasonable prospect of success means that the prospect must be more than “fanciful”, but does not have to be “probable”.

16.  The Decision was an exercise of discretion and a case management decision.  The Court of Appeal will not interfere unless the Judge “misunderstood the law or the evidence or the exercise of his discretion was plainly wrong such that it was outside the generous ambit within which a reasonable disagreement is possible”: Wong Kar Gee Mimi v Severn Villa Ltd [2012] 1 HKLRD 887, §31.

Ground 1

17.  Under Ground 1, the plaintiff argues that the Judge erred in holding that the Documents requested are not directly relevant in resolving the Blue Tick Issue.   

18.  Ground 1 is unmeritorious for the following reasons.

(1)  To begin with, the test for issuing a letter of request is whether “it appears necessary for the purposes of justice” to do so (Order 39, rule 1(1) & (2) of the RHC), which includes a consideration of whether the evidence sought is relevant and material: China Metal Recycling (Holdings) Ltd (In Liquidation) v Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu (A Firm) [2024] HKCFI 877, §15.2 per Cheng J.  We reject the plaintiff’s argument in the Draft NoA at §1.5 that her burden is not to show that the Documents sought are decisive of the plaintiff’s overall case or the outcome of the trial, but that the Documents assist in the resolution of the Blue Tick Issue.

(2)  As pointed out by the Judge in §7 of the Leave Decision, the crux of the Judge’s decision on the issue of relevance, materiality and necessity lies in the formulation of the request.  The plaintiff did not ask for acknowledgments from Google that they did not delete any emails belonging to the plaintiff’s email account since 2017 and/or even if an account holder has permanently deleted an email from his/her account, Google would still retain a copy of it.  If Google does not provide such acknowledgments, it is not possible to know whether the fact that no documents are provided by Google is due to no such email having ever been sent in 2017, or because Google no longer retains any records of such email (even if there had been any).  This may then generate further disputes between the parties as to how Google’s response should be interpreted, which does not assist the court in resolving the case at all.

(3)  In this regard, the plaintiff in her statement at §§18 to 19 criticises the Judge for holding that Google’s return would only be useful if accompanied with the acknowledgments without referring to Mr Pong’s opinion that Google’s return would contain sufficient details to be useful in determining the Blue Tick Issue.  An example would be Google’s return in the Rocky Mountain Bank case (where metadata of deleted emails beyond the reach of the user was disclosed).  We reject that criticism.  As pointed out by the Judge in the Decision at §29, in Rocky Mountain Bank, Google was only asked to provide information on 23 September 2009 in respect of an email received by a user on 12 August 2009 and deleted on 19 September 2009.  The deletion occurred recently at the time when the court order was made.  In contrast, the deletion in the present case occurred more than seven years ago.  The fact that metadata of deleted emails beyond the reach of the user was disclosed in Rocky Mountain Bank does not necessarily mean that Google’s return in the present case would contain the same or similar details disclosed by it in Rocky Mountain Bank.  The plaintiff has not engaged with the Judge’s reasoning and it has not been demonstrated why it is plainly wrong.

(4)  In any event, as accepted by the plaintiff’s counsel at the hearing before the Judge, even if Google discloses email in the plaintiff’s email account that was sent from SEC-M, the plaintiff will not concede failure, as she will still run her case on the basis that she never used SEC-M, in which case the court will still need to assess the credibility of the plaintiff and the defendant and decide between the different expert opinions.  The fact that the court has to rely upon other matters in resolving the case suggests that the Documents sought are not material.

(5)  In view of the above, we do not accept that the plaintiff has discharged her burden in showing that it is necessary in the interests of justice to obtain the Documents.

Grounds 2 and 3

19.  Grounds 2 and 3 both raise the question of whether the Documents sought exist and are likely to be in the possession of Google, and will be dealt with together.

20.  In respect of Ground 2, the plaintiff argues that the court erred in finding in the Decision at §21 that Google’s standard reply suggests that “whatever data that is available to the account holder would be within the control of him/her” in that Google in Rocky Mountain Bank had provided data about a message which was “auto-deleted and is no longer available to the user”, ie more than what is available or within the control of the account holder.  This argument is unmeritorious.  As pointed out above, the context of the Rocky Mountain Bank case is different from the present case.  Rocky Mountain Bankdoes not assist the plaintiff in showing that the Documents sought would still be in existence and are likely to be in Google’s possession.

21.  In respect of Ground 3, the plaintiff argues that as Mr Pong’s opinion was uncontradicted, the Judge was wrong in rejecting his opinion.  Again, we see no merits in such an argument.

(1)  First, the court’s approach in assessing uncontradicted expert evidence is well established.  Whilst the plaintiff in §§12 to 13 of her statement referred to Griffiths v TUI [2023] 3 WLR 1204; [2023] UKSC 48 in support of the proposition that the court should not accede to the defendant’s criticisms in submissions of the plaintiff’s expert medical evidence when the defendant has chosen not to challenge such evidence by way of cross-examination or contrary evidence, it is to be noted that the UK Supreme Court at §63 pointed out that, one of the exceptions to such a rule will be where there is a bold assertion of opinion in an expert’s opinion without any reasoning to support it.  See also Traffic Stream Infrastructure Co Ltd & Ors v Full Wisdom Holdings Ltd & Ors (2004) 7 HKCFAR 442 (a case where no weight was attached to the foreign law opinion evidence since it involved no more than a bare conclusion without analysis or explanation) at §22, where the Court of Final Appeal held that, if the circumstances so warrant, the court is entitled to reject unsatisfactory and uncontradicted expert evidence.  

(2)  Having considered the evidence placed before this court, we consider that the Judge’s reasoning in rejecting Mr Pong’s opinion in Decision at §22 is logical and sound, and cannot be said to be plainly wrong.  As pointed out by the defendant in §6(a) of his skeleton submissions, whether Google still retains records of email sent seven years ago is a matter of corporate policy.  No one other than Google could know what the retention policy is.  Given that Mr Pong already admitted that he has no knowledge of Google’s email retention policy, he has no expertise to opine on this issue and it does not matter whether Mr Pong has the expertise in digital and forensic investigation or not.  We also agree with the Judge’s reasoning in §§23 to 30 of the Decision that the US cases do not assist the plaintiff.  Mr Pong’s opinion as to whether Google still retains records of email received by a user seven years ago is nothing more than his speculation.  It is open to the Judge, and she is correct to do so, to reject Mr Pong’s bare assertion which is unsupported by evidence.  

(3)  Contrary to §3.2 of the Draft NoA, we also do not see how the Judge erred in understanding the technical concept of “deletion” in the Decision at §22.

(4)  In any event, Mr Pong’s opinion is not uncontradicted.  The Q&A article in Google’s website (exhibited to the defendant’s 9^th affidavit) shows that, for the paid service known as Google Workspace (as opposed to personal email account), the administrators of Google cannot recover emails that had been deleted more than 55 days ago.  If emails deleted more than 55 days ago cannot be recovered in the paid version of Gmail, common sense suggests that the same cannot be done for the free version of Gmail.

(5)  For completeness, we should also mention that we reject the plaintiff’s submission in her statement at §§14 to 16 that it was unfair and wrong for the defendant to criticise Mr Pong’s reasoning by way of written submissions without applying for leave to explain Mr Jeffries’ response and to comment on Mr Pong’s reasons by way of affirmation.  An affirmation should not contain argumentative material: Re Linea Trading Company Limited (HCCW 350/2004, 11 July 2005, at §4(4) per Barma J (as he then was)).  In any case, there is no unfairness occasioned to the plaintiff.  From the defendant’s 9^th affidavit at §§7 to 12, it is clear that the defendant disputes that the emails deleted in 2017 will be recoverable from Google’s system.  Therefore, the plaintiff should be clearly aware that there is a disputed issue as to whether Google still retains the Documents sought, and she is required to adduce credible evidence to discharge her burden and demonstrate that the Documents sought from Google would still be available, which she has not done in the present case.

Ground 4

22.  As for Ground 4:

(1)  As pointed out by the Judge in §13 of the Leave Decision:

“13. … The US legal adviser’s opinion was also mere speculation. Insofar as it was suggested that I had relied on Mr Jeffries’ opinion in reaching my decision, I refer to paragraphs 20 – 30 of the Decision which set out the bases of my reasoning, which show no reliance on Mr Jeffries’ opinion.”

(2)  We agree with the Judge’s views above.

23.  In all, we are not satisfied that the plaintiff’s intended appeal has a reasonable prospect of success.  We also do not see any other reason in the interests of justice why the appeal shall be heard.

Disposition

24.  For the above reasons, the Leave Summons is dismissed.

25.  There is no apparent reason why costs should not follow the event.  We order the plaintiff to pay the costs of the defendant, which we summarily assess in the sum of $166,250.  The above costs order (including the assessment of costs) is an order nisi, which shall become absolute unless an application is made to vary the same within 14 days from the date of this judgment.

26.  As the plaintiff’s application is totally without merit, we make an order pursuant to Order 59, rule 2A(8) of RHC that no party may under rule 2A(7) request the determination of this Court to be reconsidered at an oral hearing inter partes.

[1]  As pointed out by the Judge, there is a discrepancy amongst the pleadings, affirmations and other documents as to whether the number of Bitcoins concerned are 999.9000261 or 999.9900261.

[2]  There is no dispute between the parties that this email address belongs to the plaintiff.

[3]  The date the defendant alleges the plaintiff started using SEC-M.

[4]  “2007” in §17(b)(i) of the Decision is apparently a clerical error.

[5]  Permanently removes data from a database.