MDL Panel Denies Nationwide Crypto Lawsuit Consolidation, Keeps Cases Split Across Illinois, California and Pennsylvania

Court Panel Rejects Nationwide Crypto Lawsuit Consolidation

A federal judicial panel has refused to merge three separate investor suits into one nationwide proceeding. The decision keeps litigation scattered across Illinois, California, and Pennsylvania, raising the cost and complexity of claims tied to digital asset offerings.

Plaintiff Anthony Motto asked the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation to centralize the Greene case from Illinois with two similar actions in California and Pennsylvania. He argued that common questions about marketing practices, token classification, and disclosure duties justified a single forum. The panel disagreed, finding the cases too distinct in parties, facts, and requested relief to warrant consolidation.

Judges weighed whether shared legal theories outweighed the practical burdens of merging dockets. They concluded that differences in how each platform allegedly sold tokens, and variations in state-law claims, created too many individualized issues. Separate judges will continue handling discovery, class certification fights, and potential trials.

The ruling leaves plaintiffs litigating in three separate districts, each applying its own procedural rules and timelines. Defense teams gain breathing room to tailor arguments to local precedent rather than face a single, coordinated attack. Plaintiffs lose the leverage of unified discovery that might have pressured broader settlements or precedent-setting rulings on whether certain tokens qualify as securities.

For crypto markets, the decision signals that courts will treat enforcement actions and private suits as case-by-case affairs rather than industry-wide sweeps. Issuers and exchanges now face fragmented legal risk instead of one decisive forum that could have clarified token status nationwide. Traders and DeFi protocols gain time, but they also inherit uncertainty as different districts may reach conflicting conclusions on the same assets.

Decentralized platforms should prepare for prolonged, jurisdiction-specific scrutiny rather than a single precedent that settles classification questions for the entire sector.