According to Business Times on Thursday, the High Court rejected a bid to have Terraform Labs and its founder, Do Kwon, removed from the company’s legal protections, opening the door for a potential class-action case in Singapore.Citing the website’s rules of usage, Terraform lawyers attempted to reroute the case to an arbitration procedure, as reported by the Business Times.The attorneys maintained that users had forfeited their rights to a trial and to file a class-action lawsuit.In contrast, the court made a different decision.
“To our knowledge, this is the furthest a class-action suit has progressed in the world,” Mahesh Rai, a director of Drew & Napier, which represents the claimants, said in an interview. “Now we are approaching discovery stage.”
On behalf of 375 other people who allege they lost a total of $57 million, Douglas Gan and Julian Moreno Beltran filed the lawsuit in September 2022.The plaintiffs contend that in order for Terraform Labs, Do Kwon, and his co-founders to successfully market the algorithmic stablecoin terraUSD (UST), they engaged in fraudulent misrepresentation. As a result, they bought and staked the tokens and held onto them until UST’s value plummeted to less than $0.10 in May 2022.
The Securities and Exchange Commission has also accused Terraform of fraud in the United States, claiming the company was offering unregistered securities for sale.Terraform requested the case’s dismissal in October, arguing that the regulator had not been allowed to present its case.