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There was another hearing yesterday in the $10B bitcoin dispute between Ira Kleiman and Craig Wright: law360.com/assetmanagemen…
This was not a continuation of the evidentiary hearing on possible sanctions -- that's set for Aug. 5. This was on Wright's motion for judgment on the pleadings.
He's arguing that the federal court does not have jurisdiction to handle the case because there's no complete diversity of citizenship. In other words, the plaintiffs need to have different citizenship than the defendants.
The issue is that W&K Info Defense Research LLC, founded in 2011 by Wright and Dave Kleiman, is a plaintiff and its ownership is murky. Ira Kleiman argues that Dave is the only owner.
Wright argues there are three possible potential foreign owners of W&K, including his ex-wife Lynn Wright, a Vietnamese national Uyen Nguyen and a defunct Australian entity Coin-Exch PTY Ltd.
Judge Beth Bloom (who is overseeing the whole case) didn't make a determination from the bench, though she did seem frustrated at Wright's various statements over the years to different courts regarding W&K's ownership.
Wright's attorney admitted his client has credibility issues but urged the court to look instead to other evidence he'd provided, like emails between Kleiman, Wright and his ex-wife from 2011 when they were starting the company.
Kleiman's attorney attempted to poke holes in each piece of evidence and at the end argued that judicial economy favors keeping the case in federal court.
After a year and a half, Judge Bloom and Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart have devoted a lot of hours to the case, and it would be a waste to kick it to state court where a new judge would have to start all over again.
Judge Bloom indicated that that was likely the strongest factor working in Kleiman's favor. No idea how she'll rule though.
