[1]https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/secret-recordings-ex-partne
   r-continue-haunt-law-firm-freedman-normand-2023-05-10/
   (Reuters) - The plaintiffs firm once known as Roche Freedman, now
   redubbed Freedman Normand Friedland, has been ousted from another
   crypto class action because of clandestine – and embarrassing — video
   recordings of onetime name partner Kyle Roche.
   But this time, the problem wasn’t the content of the videos, in which
   Roche appears to boast of his lucrative stake in blockchain company Ava
   Labs Inc and to suggest that he filed class actions against Ava
   competitors to boost Ava’s prospects.
   Instead, U.S. District Judge James Donato of San Francisco removed
   Freedman Normand as lead counsel in a securities fraud class action
   against blockchain company Dfinity USA Research LLC because he found
   the firm to be so consumed with vindicating its own reputation that it
   could not be relied upon to protect the interests of class members.
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   Donato’s May 8 decision followed seven months of litigation that the
   judge described as “a bitter war" that included "charges of personal
   vendettas, deepfake videos and other events not typically encountered
   in securities lawsuits.” (More on that below.)
   He is the second federal judge to remove Freedman Normand as lead
   counsel in a crypto case, after U.S. District Judge Katherine Polk
   Failla of Manhattan booted the firm from a class action against
   stablecoin issuer Tether Ltd and crypto exchange Bitfinex last October.
   After Failla’s ruling, Freedman Normand voluntarily withdrew from two
   other crypto class actions in Manhattan federal court.
   The firm has defeated disqualification motions in several other cases,
   including litigation against self-proclaimed Bitcoin inventor Craig
   Wright, who unsuccessfully sought to remove Freedman Normand from the
   appeal of a $143 million judgment the firm obtained for Wright’s
   onetime business partner.
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   The Dfinity fight before Donato was particularly heated, though,
   because Freedman Normand blamed Dfinity’s founder and CEO for the
   entire Roche mess.
   According to the firm, it was Dfinity that engaged a Norwegian
   businessman with ties to international intelligence agencies to lure
   Roche to London to discuss a supposed investment in a litigation
   funding venture. Those meetings, according to Freedman Normand, were
   actually a set up: The Norwegian operative got Roche drunk and secretly
   videotaped him making intemperate remarks, including a comment that
   crypto class members were “100,000 idiots out there” and that jurors
   are “10 idiots [who] control the flow of all the money that happens in
   American class actions.”
   Freedman Normand asserted that Dfinity then launched an anonymous
   website, Crypto Leaks, to post the secret recordings of Roche.
   The firm has espoused different positions on the authenticity of the
   recordings at various points in its fight to stay in the Dfinity class
   action. Early on, it acknowledged that Roche – who left the firm soon
   after Crypto Leaks published the videos – had made inappropriate and
   inexcusable comments. But later in the disqualification litigation,
   Freedman Normand sought to file an expert report purporting to show
   that many of the Crypto Leaks videos were inauthentic “deepfakes.”
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   Donato noted the shift in his opinion ousting the firm. He called it a
   “flipflop,” and said Freedman Normand’s renunciation of its
   “forthright” acknowledgement had added to his concern that the
   plaintiffs firm “is heavily invested in protecting its own interests,
   to the detriment of those of the class.”
   Roche, who now has his own eponymous firm, did not respond to my email
   query.
   Freedman Normand said in an email statement that it is "disappointed"
   with Donato's order. "It criticized the firm for merely defending
   itself from Dfinity’s accusations [and] did not address central aspects
   of our arguments," the statement said. "The firm has never
   'flipflopped.' We continue to disavow the problematic statements in the
   videos, but when new evidence indicated the videos are deepfaked and
   that Mr. Roche never made those statements, we sensibly advised the
   court of that development."
   Dfinity counsel from Cravath, Swaine & Moore and Quinn Emanuel Urquhart
   & Sullivan did not deny Dfinity’s involvement in the secret recordings
   in their brief responding to Freedman Normand’s assertions. Dfinity
   merely said that it didn’t matter if Roche was set up because he was
   not coerced into making the statements that landed him in hot water.
   Dfinity’s lawyers did not respond to my email request for comment.
   After initial briefing on Dfinity’s motion to disqualify Freedman
   Normand, Donato ordered a deposition to determine the extent of Roche’s
   remaining ties to Freedman Normand, including the extent of Roche's
   control of the firm's Ava-issued tokens, which are held in a crypto
   wallet.
   The deposition of name partner Freedman generated yet more bizarre
   allegations. In a letter asking Donato to seal the deposition
   transcript because it revealed confidential information about the
   firm’s relationship with its now-former client Ava, Freedman Normand
   also told the judge that it feared Dfinity executives would “misuse”
   the sensitive information to threaten and intimidate Roche and his
   former colleagues. Freedman Normand asserted that Dfinity had already
   “made threats on Mr. Roche’s life, necessitating FBI involvement.”
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   In Monday’s decision, Donato said he did not need to probe that claim,
   which turned out to have been based on “multiple layers of hearsay.”
   (Apparently, a Freedman Normand associate told the firm's in-house
   general counsel that a friend, also a lawyer, reported hearing that
   “people associated with Dfinity were planning to kill Mr. Roche.”)
   Donato said he regarded Freedman Normand's assertion of a murder threat
   as yet more evidence that the firm was so “deeply immersed in a toxic
   perception of the defendants in this case” that it was not capable of
   fulfilling its fiduciary obligations to the class.
   Donato also said that the record showed Roche remains entangled with
   his former firm. Roche’s new firm is co-counsel with Freedman Normand
   in three cases – none of them class actions, according to the firm –
   and is still in joint control, with Freedman, of the digital wallet
   containing tokens from Ava. (Ava, according to Freedman Normand,
   terminated its relationship with Roche and the successor firm after
   Crypto Leaks released the Roche tapes.)
   It has now been six months since the Roche tapes shook up the crypto
   bar. Most of the disqualification motions based on the tapes have
   already been decided, so Donato’s Dfinity ruling serves as a sort of
   coda on the entire fiasco.
   In the end, it turns out, Freedman Normand's fight to delegitimize the
   tapes seems to have only made things worse.

References

   1. https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/secret-recordings-ex-partner-continue-haunt-law-firm-freedman-normand-2023-05-10/