In a case in the US that has been closely followed in the cryptocurrency sector, Uniswap Labs and its CEO, Hayden Z. Adams, achieved a significant legal victory. The Federal Court for the Southern District of New York definitively rejected all of the plaintiffs’ claims in the “Risley” class-action lawsuit.
The decision reaffirmed the fundamental principle that developers cannot be held liable for third-party misuse simply because they built a “neutral infrastructure.”
The United States District Court for the Southern District of New York ruled that the plaintiffs’ Second Amended Petition (SAC) was also legally unfounded. Judge Katherine Polk Failla, presiding over the case, dismissed the lawsuit entirely on the grounds that the defendants lacked “sufficient legal basis to establish their claims.”
The lawsuit was based on the claim by Nessa Risley and other investors that they suffered losses after investing in 38 different crypto assets that were described as “scam tokens” after being traded on Uniswap (UNI). The plaintiffs sought to hold Uniswap Labs and its CEO responsible, as the identities of the issuers of these tokens were unknown.
However, the court noted that the infrastructure created by the developers was a decentralized and automated system, and ruled that they could not be held directly responsible for fraudulent activities such as “rug pull” and “pump and dump” carried out by third parties.
*This is not investment advice.
