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He bought a seat on the plane. That he didn't use it doesn't mean it wasn't still his seat. If I ran the airline, I'd give him a 50% refund for the return leg, but if he didn't notify me that he wouldn't be taking the first flight I may not have been able to offer that seat to another paying customer.

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Almost every flight during peak travel periods is oversold, which means that the airlines are selling more seats than they have (which sounds like fraud, since if you end up in an oversold flight and no one cancels, they ask the PASSENGERS to make the sacrifice, even though the reality is that the airline sold something that they no longer had)... so there was almost certainly someone else who got his seat.

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