Swan Bitcoin has sued former employees. It alleges that it received assistance from Tether and is now accusing its law firm of misconduct for accepting the stablecoin issuer as a client.
Swan Bitcoin, a financial services company, has filed a lawsuit against Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, a law firm that it continues to retain, following the hiring of a counsel who represents Tether, a rival crypto firm and stablecoin issuer.
Swan Bitcoin Sues its Lawyers For taking Tether as Client
On November 22, Swan filed a lawsuit against Gibson in California’s Superior Court, accusing it of legal malpractice. Swan claimed that Gibson “wooed and won Swan” to represent it against “former-partner-turned-adversary” Tether before the law firm “embraced Tether as a client and told Swan to get lost.”
Swan alleged that one of Gibson’s attorneys contacted its CEO, Cory Klippsten, to advise that Swan would need to seek additional counsel. This was because the law firm had hired Barry Berke, a Tether lawyer, and a potential conflict of interest was involved.
Swan filed a lawsuit against a group of its former employees in September, with Gibson serving as its legal counsel. The lawsuit accused the employees of obtaining software code to establish a crypto-mining company, Proton Management.
Swan claimed that Proton had persuaded Tether to abandon Swan and support Proton instead, allegations that Proton denied. Swan’s lawsuit did not include Tether as a defendant.
Gibson filed to withdraw as Swan’s attorneys in its lawsuit against Proton on November 24, asserting that “the attorney-client relationship has been completely shattered.”
Swan’s litigation against the law firm was referenced, and it was alleged that Swan informed the firm that it would “never” pay the legal fees it owed and that it “demanded millions of dollars” in exchange for Gibson’s withdrawal from the lawsuit.
On November 25, Swan requested a provisional restraining order from the Superior Court of California to prevent Gibson from withdrawing from its case against Proton and engaging Tether as a client.
The claim was that Gibson was “clearly violating the ‘Hot Potato’ Rule in attorney ethics,” which states that lawyers are prohibited from dropping a client by withdrawing from a case to prevent a conflict of interest.
The restraining order hearing is scheduled for November 26.