Sooo...
Long story:

At about Oct. 9 I started making a Typo3 website project for a client, together with a freelancer who is an expert in typo3. I paid him for his work well after he finished it each time.
As neither me, nor my client, had a server capable of running typo3 we hosted the project for the time being on his server.

About 3 days ago, we had a big argument, because he started doing less and less work and I had to do most of it on my very own. Point was, he didn't like to take orders from a "19-year-old kiddy" (not looking at the fact, I'm just 17, which would have made matters worse). He decided to drop out and give me 1 hour to backup all data.

I of course, instantly started to make file backups aswell as database backups. As I still didn't have a server to try it out on, i relied on the good hoping he at least held his last promise to give me time to backup the entire project I had done to that very point.

Now I finally found a new server to host the project on, and I found out, that the entire database has been reset to the stand of the 9. Oct., which was the date the project was set-up on.

So now I'm here, a project, literally back at the beginning, and the deadline coming end of this month.

To put my point clear: Can I sue that ba$tard?

I mean, he literally deleted MY work, that *I* have done. Isn't that some sort of illegal act?

edit: I go to the believe that he has a backup on his own, in case I would decide to come "crawling back". I have no proof of that, but It's what I do belive from his personality. Assuming that he does, is there any way I can force him to give it back out?