Well, here we go again with the FTX saga. It seems the legal fallout from the exchange’s collapse is far from over, and now it’s snagging one of the law firms that worked with them.
Fenwick & West is pushing back, hard, against an updated class-action lawsuit. The firm basically told a Florida judge this week that the whole thing should be thrown out.
Fenwick Calls the Claims “Stale” and “Flawed”
So what’s this all about? Earlier this month, a group of FTX users pointed to new info from bankruptcy and criminal cases. They’re arguing the law firm was central to the fraud—that it played a “key and crucial role” in how the whole thing was pulled off.
But Fenwick isn’t having it. In their filing, they called the users’ theory “as facile as it is flawed.” Their main defense is pretty straightforward: they say they were just doing normal legal work. They didn’t know anything about the fraud, so they can’t be held responsible for aiding it. I mean, that’s the core of it, right? They were just doing their job.
They also pointed out that this feels like a re-run. The plaintiffs had similar claims against another law firm, Sullivan & Cromwell, but dropped them later. Fenwick’s asking why the same claims should stick now, just aimed at them.
Disputing Testimony and “False Characterizations”
Then there’s the part about Nishad Singh. He was FTX’s lead engineer and testified during Sam Bankman-Fried’s trial. The lawsuit suggests Singh said Fenwick knew about the misuse of customer funds and helped hide it.
Fenwick says that’s a misreading. According to them, Singh only said they advised on how to structure founder loans—which, they argue, is a totally normal thing for a company like FTX to do. They also noted that plenty of other people close to FTX, including in-house lawyers and accountants, had no idea about the fraud either.
It makes you wonder. If all these professionals were in the dark, how could one law firm be singled out as a central player?
New Allegations Too Little, Too Late?
And then there are these new claims about securities laws. The updated suit says Fenwick helped launch and promote the FTX Token, violating state laws in Florida and California.
Fenwick’s response here is pretty blunt: they say it’s too late for that. If the plaintiffs really had these claims, why wait until now to bring them up? They called the move an “eleventh-hour attempt” to keep the case alive after a judge dismissed similar claims against other defendants.
It feels a bit like they’re throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks. But Fenwick seems confident none of it will.
What happens next is up to the court, of course. But one thing’s for sure: the long tail of the FTX collapse is still winding its way through the legal system, and it’s pulling in just about everyone who was nearby.
