Nobody has asked for my suggestions about how to improve the American legal system.
But what has all the money, the time, the work, the hotel bills, the footage, the angst around the Kleiman v Wright trial really achieved?
Iāve been following it as closely as I can from afar and if you asked me to summarise the story of Craig Wright and the beginnings of Bitcoin, Iām not sure how much more I know now for sure than I did before Judge Beth Bloom welcomed the jury into her courtroom way back on November 1.
Ask me about the American legal system, and, yes, Iāve absorbed a fair bit: I know about the different kinds of decisions juries are asked to make in civil and criminal cases; I know what an Allen charge is; and I know how you can sound like you know what youāre talking about by calling it āthe crossā instead of cross-examination.
I also know what Kurt Wuckert Jrās hotel room looks likeāin fact, I practically feel Iāve lived in it with himāuntil he had to broadcast from the back of a car because the room could not be extended any further thanks to an art fair coming to Miami. Connectivity in the car proved even worse than at the hotel (see above): āIs this performance art?ā and āKURT LIVING OUT OF HIS CARā appeared in the chat from his worried fans.
But back to the law. This was a civil case. Nobody was going to be found guilty or sent to prison. It was a super-large scale version of somebody claiming a refund from a trader who hadnāt delivered on their promise. Anyone can bring a case against anyone else, and the court is there to settle disputes by examining the factsāin front of a jury in this caseāand applying the law.
The facts were voluminous, complicated and disputed. Not only did the jury have to try to decide what happened, sometimes many years agoāand in Australia!ābut how what they worked out had or hadnāt happened might or might not be relevant to the complicated charges.
And they were asked to make those decisions by listening to a long series of stuttering examinations punctuated by a stream of technical interruptions:
Vel Freedman (for the plaintiffs): āAnd the amount of those credits was in excess of $10 millions?ā
Amanda McGovern (for the defence): āObjection. Foundation. Could you ā Iām having a tough time hearing the question.ā
Judge Bloom: āMove your mic up a little bit Mr Freedman. The object is over-ruled. Iāll allow it.ā
The Witness: āThe value is not that amount. It is an offset against other tax.ā
Hours and hours of that kind of thing where, if youād been able to filter out the interruptions, you might have had a chance of following the conversation, butāon paper at leastāit feels like trying to concentrate on a high-level discussion while hearing the neighbours fighting next door.
Most people following the case, like me, donāt have a direct financial interest in it. Weāre not, like Ira Kleiman, trying to claim money or, like Dr. Wright, denying that we owe money. But I, at least, was hoping that the process of settling the dispute would shed light on the very interesting history of Bitcoin.
And it has, in a way, through all the evidence thatās been presented to the court. But if the pieces of the jigsaw have been producedāby both sides, to try to support their own lines of argumentāthere hasnāt been anyone interested in fitting them together and building up an easy-to-understand picture. Instead, as soon as one set of lawyers starts putting some pieces together, the other side does its best to unpick them and maybe sweep them off the table and onto the floor.
Whatās needed, for the purposes of public enlightenment, is something more like a public enquiry, with an independent chairperson and maybe an expert committee in support, whose only job is to assemble the facts into a fat, authoritative report representing their considered version of the true story.
The past few weeks in Miami have been frustrating because in all probability every important piece of the jigsaw has been filed in evidence, but thereās been no way of creating a beautiful, finished picture from them.
I feel for the poor jury. Not just for the long hours and the many days they have had to spend in court, but for having been presented with a nightmarish set of questions at the end and told to sit in a room until they agree on the answers. If I was one of them, Iād be having horrible flashbacks to the worst exam papers I ever faced. Try this:
Do you find that any of the following claims by W&K Info Defense Research, LLC are barred the statute of limitations? (sic)
Conversion
Unjust Enrichment
Fraud
Constructive Fraud
Breach of Fiduciary Duty (answer Barred or Not Barred to each one)
Maybe that would make a good question in an exam after a few years at a top law school. But for a group of people plucked at random from the blameless population of Miami? I donāt think so.Ā
Check out all of the CoinGeek special reports on theĀ Kleiman v Wright YouTube playlist.
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