Mistakenly Transferred ETH To Be Property of Original Owners, Rules A Court in Canada

By Prashant Jha

A Canadian court of law has declared its ruling regarding a sum of mistakenly transferred Ether, Ethereum’s cryptocurrency, stating that the amount is to be transferred back to the one who it was actually due to. The verdict has been recorded by a Oxford University law faculty report published recently.

The court that declared this verdict was a superior trial court in British Columbia. The case it was hearing and deciding upon was that of the plaintiff Copytrack accidentally transferring Ethers to Brian Wall. While Copytrack is a blockchain startup from the area, Brian Wall, the defendant, was an investor who had taken part in the start-up’s fundraising round, investing in its ICO (initial coin offering).

The report states the details of the incident. Apparently, the plaintiff was supposed to transfer 530 units of its native token Copytrack (CPY) to Wall after he participated in their ICO. However, mistakenly, they ended up transferring 530 Ethers, the cryptocurrency of Ethereum (having a significantly greater market value) to the defendant instead. When the transfer was made to Wall’s private cryptocurrency wallet, the 530 ETH tokens cost around $370,482. Compared to that, the market value of the 530 CPY tokens he was supposed to receive was a meagre sum of $583.

When Copytrack realized its mistake, it requested Wall to return the ETH to them immediately. Although Wall did agree at first, he soon claimed inability saying that his crypto wallet had been hacked and the ETH tokens stolen. To complicate matters further, he passed away soon after the issue was taken to court.

Since there was not much of a point in dragging on the trial in the absence of the original defendant himself, the court simply ruled that the accidentally transferred ETH tokens were the property of Copytrack. While Canada is known for its crypto-friendly stance, the court in this issue made no attempt to clarify the blurry lines of the legality concerning crypto transfers. While the narrow scope of the judgement made it difficult to include an opinion on the legal issues surrounding crypto transfers, this case does pose intriguing questions regarding the lack of clarity in crypto-related norms or legal frameworks.