The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York recently rejected a proposed settlement of a securities class action involving purchasers of digital tokens due to concerns about whether the lead plaintiff had adequately represented the class for settlement purposes.  Judge Lewis A. Kaplan held in Williams v. Block.one that the federal securities laws did not appear to apply equally to all class members’ token purchases and that the lead plaintiff had not produced evidence showing that its own purchases were (or were not) subject to the securities laws in a proportion similar to other class members’ purchases.

The Williams decision highlights the complexity of applying to blockchain transactions the Supreme Court’s transactional test for determining the securities laws’ applicability.  Those factual complexities could increase the difficulty of litigating or settling securities-law class actions involving classes of digital-coin purchasers.

Read the full post here on our Corporate Defense and Disputes blog.