A United States Court Judge Kaplan has now ruled that the class action suit brought against EOS developer Block.one ought to be represented by a lead plaintiff. This was after five of the investors of Block.one ICO displayed a lack of goodwill and commitment to make them the lead plaintiff of the case.

“Raises further concerns that the application is being driven by the lawyers, rather than the plaintiffs.”

The lead plaintiff often brings forth the interests of other plaintiffs in court in the case of a class-action suit. Hence, they get to pick the attorneys to handle the suit as well as picking up the legal tab. In this case, Judge Kaplan was keen to highlight that the case drags on for years which is potentially lucrative for the lead plaintiff’s attorneys.

CAOF declared the biggest Block.one loser

Law firm of Grant & Eisenhofer P.A has been chosen as the lead counsel in the case. This was decided upon by the Crypto Assets Opportunity Fund (CAOF) and rubber-stamped by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. This was after an August 4^th hearing was able to confirm the losses suffered by CAOF and determined that they were the biggest losers.

The Williams Group that had filed a similar suit however had their motion shot down after the Judge deemed the evidence submitted inaccurate and unsubstantiated. Their trading data didn’t quantify how much they really had lost from the ICO. Data submitted indicated that they had lost more tokens than they acquired in the Initial Coin offering.

In a similar scenario, plaintiff Token Fund I, was incorporated only 2 days prior to filing the motion to lead the class action. They failed to produce intricate details of their previous trading activities, especially with Block.one.

The motion clarifies that considerations such as previous collaborations amongst group members and how they intend to move forward with the class action have to be made when a group makes an application for lead plaintiff.

Notably, Block.one launched an ICO last year raising north of $4 Billion. They were later on involved in a legal tussle with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that saw them remitting $24 million in fines. They have been implicated in several class-action suits for allegedly issuing unregistered securities.