Tether, the issuer of the USDT stablecoin, has requested that the Roche Freedman law firm be “terminated” as counsel in the Bitfinex and Tether class-action lawsuit. The request comes after a motion filed by Kyle Roche to be removed as counsel in the case.
Tether wants Roche Freedman removed from the class action lawsuit
On Wednesday, a court order request was filed by Elliot Greenfield of Debevoise & Plimpton LLP representing Tether and Bitfinex to remove the Roche & Freedman law firm from the class action lawsuit facing the USDT stablecoin issuer.
The law firm representing Tether and Bitfinex also wants Roche’s law firm to be removed entirely from the case and to certify that they have returned or destroyed any documents issued by the defendants. The law firm also wants Roche Freedman to assure that they have not shared these documents with any third party, such as Ava Labs.
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The request comes after Kyle Roche filed a notice of motion to withdraw from the Tether and Bitfinex class action lawsuit amid the CryptoLeaks expose. CryptoLeaks published several videos of Roche admitting that Ava Labs paid him to sue its competitors.
According to Greenfield, the statements made by Roche on the CryptoLeaks website raised concerns that Kyle Roche could be abusing the discovery process and misusing information. He also said that the concerns raised were relevant to the case because Roche Freedman filed requests for several documents that were not associated with the lawsuit.
The lawyer also wants any requests made by Roche Freedman for documents in the lawsuit to be repressed because they were confidential and the information was sensitive. Moreover, disclosing some of the information would also affect the defendants’ and their customers’ privacy and security.
Kyle Roche withdraws from the lawsuit
Kyle Roche has filed motions to withdraw from the Tether and Bitfinex lawsuit and others. However, Greenfield has said that the withdrawal did not address the issues raised regarding misusing discovery.
Greenfield also said removing the law firm would not harm the case because the plaintiffs would still be represented by two leading firms such as Selendy Gay Elsberg PLLC and Schneider Wallace Cottrell Konecky LLP.
The class-action lawsuit against Tether and Bitfinex in 2019 alleged that the companies manipulated the crypto market by issuing USDT that was not backed by reserves. Roche has also withdrawn from other lawsuits such as Binance, Solana, Tron, Nexo, Bitfinex, and Dfinity.
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