The firm has espoused different positions on the authenticity of the recordings at various points in its fight to stay in the Dfinity class action. Those meetings, according to Freedman Normand, were actually a set up: The Norwegian operative got Roche drunk and secretly videotaped him making intemperate remarks, including a comment that crypto class members were “100,000 idiots out there” and that jurors are “10 idiots control the flow of all the money that happens in American class actions.”įreedman Normand asserted that Dfinity then launched an anonymous website, Crypto Leaks, to post the secret recordings of Roche. The Dfinity fight before Donato was particularly heated, though, because Freedman Normand blamed Dfinity’s founder and CEO for the entire Roche mess.Īccording to the firm, it was Dfinity that engaged a Norwegian businessman with ties to international intelligence agencies to lure Roche to London to discuss a supposed investment in a litigation funding venture. The firm has defeated disqualification motions in several other cases, including litigation against self-proclaimed Bitcoin inventor Craig Wright, who unsuccessfully sought to remove Freedman Normand from the appeal of a $143 million judgment the firm obtained for Wright’s onetime business partner. After Failla’s ruling, Freedman Normand voluntarily withdrew from two other crypto class actions in Manhattan federal court. District Judge Katherine Polk Failla of Manhattan booted the firm from a class action against stablecoin issuer Tether Ltd and crypto exchange Bitfinex last October.
He is the second federal judge to remove Freedman Normand as lead counsel in a crypto case, after U.S. District Judge James Donato of San Francisco removed Freedman Normand as lead counsel in a securities fraud class action against blockchain company Dfinity USA Research LLC because he found the firm to be so consumed with vindicating its own reputation that it could not be relied upon to protect the interests of class members.ĭonato’s May 8 decision followed seven months of litigation that the judge described as “a bitter war" that included "charges of personal vendettas, deepfake videos and other events not typically encountered in securities lawsuits.” (More on that below.) (Reuters) - The plaintiffs firm once known as Roche Freedman, now redubbed Freedman Normand Friedland, has been ousted from another crypto class action because of clandestine – and embarrassing - video recordings of onetime name partner Kyle Roche.īut this time, the problem wasn’t the content of the videos, in which Roche appears to boast of his lucrative stake in blockchain company Ava Labs Inc and to suggest that he filed class actions against Ava competitors to boost Ava’s prospects.
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