British court allows lawsuits to be delivered via NFT

by · July 21, 2022

According to a Tuesday announcement from UK law firm Giambrone & Partners, a lawsuit filed by Fabrizio D’Aloia against Binance Holdings, Poloniex, gate.io, OKX and Bitkub over allegations that someone operated a fake clone online broker has resulted in a legal precedent that offers a digital solution to serve someone. On June 24, the judge in the case allowed the parties to be served by airdropping NFTs in wallets originally held by D’Aloia but stolen by unnamed individuals.

Until now, UK civil procedure rules have allowed actions to be served by personal service, post, delivery at a physical address or by fax or other type of “electronic communication.” However, the use of electronic methods to serve someone has usually been in cases where the parties have agreed in advance to such delivery, or a court authorizes it for “good cause”. According to Giambrone & Partners, these methods have included direct messages on Instagram, Facebook messages and a contact form on a website.

“This order is a remarkable development in the service of court documents and a welcome example of a court embracing new technology,” the law firm said. “This ruling paves the way for other victims of crypto-asset fraud to pursue strangers who misused their cryptocurrency in situations where they would not otherwise be able to.”

Demetri Bezaintes, associate at Giambrone & Partners, added:

“I am convinced that this latest judgment using NFT service has the potential to show the way to digital service over the blockchain, with all the benefits of immutability and authentication, and become common practice in the future in legal matters related to the digital world. […] It is clear that this service method has a far greater level of success compared to conventional services, such as post, in this sector.”

In addition to the precedent set by serving individuals via the blockchain, the court said crypto exchanges were responsible for ensuring that the stolen assets were not moved or withdrawn.

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A UK judge has authorized a party to a lawsuit to serve legal documents using non-fungible tokens, or NFTs.

In June, a US law firm also served a defendant using an NFT in an $8 million hacking case involving Liechtenstein-based cryptocurrency exchange LCX. The legal team aired the NFT as a temporary restraining order in a hot wallet as the name of the served party was unknown.