The Court in the Kleiman v Wright litigation has rejected Craig Wright’s application for summary judgment which would have pre-empted January’s jury trial and declared Wright an early victor over Ira Kleiman.
Wright filed the motion in May, calling Ira’s suit an ‘elaborate fiction’. He sought summary judgment in his favor on six grounds:
- The plaintiff’s claims are time-barred, as the plaintiffs were correctly served in the process of the Australian lawsuits against W&K
- The plaintiffs cannot establish that Craig and Dave had an oral partnership to mine Bitcoin between 2008 and 2011
- The property at issue in the case has already been ruled as time-barred in the context of a claim under the Florida’s Uniform Trade Secrets Act and the Defend Trade Secrets Act
- The court has no subject matter jurisdiction as there is no diversity in the parties, as is required
- Ira Kleiman has no right to cause W&K to sue Wright in light of Lynn Wright’s testimony that she has an ownership interest in W&K; Ira would have needed her consent
- The plaintiffs have not relied on any of Wright’s alleged statements, and that the statements alleged are about possible future acts and are not to be considered fraud
The Court denied all six grounds for summary judgment. As such, the trial will go ahead on January 4, 2021.
While each ground was denied for varying reasons, the standard required for a successful summary judgment application is difficult to meet, especially in a case as dense and heavily dependent on disputed facts such as this. A summary judgment application will only generally be accepted regarding undisputed facts, the truth of which would lead the litigation to inevitably fail were it to proceed.
This had to have been a somewhat expected outcome for Wright’s side, who have appeared to be ready to defend Kleiman’s lawsuit into the trial and beyond. It appears Wright and his legal team had already began looking beyond the now-defunct motion for summary judgment, towards the January 4 trial.
“We are continuing to prepare for trial and we look forward to a jury decision in 2021,” said Andrés Rivero, partner at law firm Rivero Mestre and Wright’s attorney.
Rulings on Wright and Kleiman’s motions in limine regarding the exclusion of evidence at trial, and Kleiman’s Daubert motion to exclude expert testimony are expected soon. CoinGeek will provide up-to-date coverage on these developments and others as they happen in the run-up to January’s trial.
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