Craig Wright Has To Pay $165,000 In Fees For The Kleiman Case

Back in 2018, Craig Wright, Bitcoin’s SV powerful proponent, was sued by the estate of Dave Kleiman. He used to be Wright’s former business partner back in the early days of Bitcoin. The case alleges that Wright defrauded Kleiman’s rightful claim to 1.1 million bitcoins, currently worth upwards of $5 billion.

CSW Has To Pay $165,000 In Legal Fees

While the case against the self-proclaimed Satoshi Nakamoto continues, Wright has been ordered to pay legal fees totaling $165,000 according to a court document. It’s worth noting that the judge removed some of the fees but the bill is still nothing but sizeable.

Those legal fees were incurred throughout the litigation of two motions. They are regarding the production of necessary documents on Wright’s alleged Bitcoin holdings.

Kleiman’s lawyers initially asked for $658,581 which included some expenses and mostly for wages. However, the judge found that the attorneys were charging rates in excess and had also billed for hours without explicitly explaining what they were working on. Hence, the judge stroke these expenses out.

Explaining the matter, the document reads:

It was not reasonable to have three lawyers involved to this extent to review a daft a relatively straight-forward pleading.

The Battle Rages On

Per the latest turn of events, Craig Wright sought privilege regarding the long-awaited private keys of Satoshi’s 1 million bitcoins.

CSW explained that his wife was dealing with the legal counsel for Tulip Trust 3 – a trust that Wright identified recently and is different than the other two Tulip Trusts. To this date, the keys for any of those remain in undisclosed possession.

Going forward, Judge Bruce Reinhart outlined that Wright has been providing the court with several documents that were forged throughout the litigation, hence denying his privilege claims.

“I decline to rely on this kind of document, which could easily have been generated by anyone with word processing software and a pen.” – Explained the judge.

It remains interesting to see what will happen with the keys and whether or not CSW will eventually reveal the keys to the holdings.