Shohei Ohtani should be dismissed from a lawsuit alleging his endorsement of the now-bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX, his attorneys argued in a court filing Friday.
The filing includes a four-page sworn declaration from Ohtani in Japanese, which he signed Tuesday in Anaheim, and an English translation certified by a notary.
Ohtani and other celebrity defendants were sued last November in U.S. District Court in Miami, with the plaintiffs claiming FTX leveraged the endorsers to lure consumers into investing "billions of dollars into the deceptive FTX platform to keep the whole scheme afloat." The suit claims the celebrity endorsers did not properly evaluate FTX and should thus share responsibility for an alleged $11 billion in damages.
