Tether ( USDT),-issuer Tether asks Roche Freedman to “terminate” his role as counsel in the Bitfinex/Tether class-action lawsuit. This follows a motion by Kyle Roche to have him removed from the case.
Elliot Greenfield, Debevoise & Plimpton LLP requested that Roche’s law office be removed completely from the case. They also asked that Roche’s law company certify that they have returned or destroyed all documents issued by the defendants and that they have not shared any of them with Ava Labs.
This request comes shortly after Roche filed a notice to withdrawfrom the Tether class action lawsuit. The Tether lawsuit is ongoing fallout from a CryptoLeaks expose. It alleged that the US lawyer had made a secret deal to “harm” Ava Labs rivals in return for AVAX tokens or Ava Labs equity.
Greenfield stated that Roche’s statements on CryptoLeaks raised a serious concern that Kyle Roche was “abusing the discovery process” or “misusing information” he has learned through litigation.
“He stated that he is Ava Lab’s ‘crypto expert’ as he’sue[s] 50% of the companies in this space’ and ‘know[s] how the market is going’ since he has seen every crypto company’.
Greenfield stated that the concerns are very relevant to the case and highlighted that Roche Freedman LLP had “served a number document requests seeking information that have no apparent connection to the claims or defenses in this suit.”
The lawyer also stressed that the documents should be destroyed, as they contain confidential, competitively sensitive information about the businesses of the Defendants, and also information that could threaten the privacy or security of the Defendants, and their customers, among other things.
Greenfield stated that Kyle Roche filed motions to withdraw himself from the case along with others. However, Roche’s withdrawal “does little or nothing to address serious issues concerning the misuse of discovery.”
“Even though he is no more counsel of record, he would still be able to access discovery materials and could direct the conduct for other lawyers at his law firm. He would also profit from any possible recovery in this case.”
Greenfield stated that the “removal of Plaintiffs” would not be detrimental as they would continue being represented by “two other large, experienced firms”, including Selendy Gay Elsberg PLLC or Schneider Wallace Cottrell Konecky LLP.
In 2019, a class-action lawsuit was filed alleging that Bitfinex and Tether manipulated the cryptocurrency market by issuing USDT unbacked “in an attempt to signal to market that there was huge, organic demand for crypto commodities.”
Roche also withdrew from the Binance and Solana, Trons, BitMEXs, Nexos, and Dfinity lawsuits over the past few days.
