{"id":5552,"date":"2022-12-22T16:19:00","date_gmt":"2022-12-22T16:19:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ci02b373c1300024a2"},"modified":"2022-12-22T16:19:00","modified_gmt":"2022-12-22T16:19:00","slug":"craig-wright-peter-mccormack-judgement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/legal\/craig-wright-peter-mccormack-judgement","title":{"rendered":"Craig Wright Ordered To Pay Peter McCormack\u2019s Legal Fees, Faces Contempt Of Court Hearing"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A judgment in Peter McCormack\u2019s current case against Craig Wright concluded that Wright must pay the court fees of McCormack on an indemnity basis, amongst other findings.<\/p>\n

The conclusion of the trial also sets up an inquiry into Wright for contempt of court, with Justice Chamberlain of the Royal Courts of Justice writing, \u201cI will issue a summons requiring Dr. Wright to attend a directions hearing before a judge nominated by the Judge in Charge of the Media and Communications List, who will give directions for the conduct of contempt proceedings in respect of breach of the embargo.\u201d<\/p>\n

This in reference to an embargo on a draft judgment which Wright apparently breached, as he shared details of the judgment prior to the embargo date in the MetaNet Slack (MetaNet is a BSV education company). The judgment reads that \u201cThe Court of Appeal has signaled that breaches are likely to result in contempt proceedings.\u201d <\/p>\n

While not a particularly good outcome for Wright, McCormack is also being directed<\/a> to pay approximately $1.1 million (900,000 British pounds) in legal costs, subject to evaluation by a cost judge. He has stated<\/a> on Twitter that \u201cThe stress of the last four years can’t be understated, it has had a significant impact upon me and my family.\u201d<\/p>\n

This proceeding follows a previous court trial<\/a> in the U.K. in which McCormack was sued for calling Wright a \u201cliar\u201d and \u201cfraud\u201d in 2019, which Wright argued caused monetary damages after he had speaking roles canceled. <\/p>\n

The court did, in that case, rule in Wright\u2019s favor, but only after pointing out that he submitted false evidence, which in turn led to an awarding of only 1 British pound in nominal damages. <\/p>\n

In October of 2022, Wright had lost his defamation trial<\/a> against pseudonymous Bitcoiner Hodlonaut. The lawsuit involved whether or not the challenging of Wright\u2019s claims that he is Satoshi Nakamoto fulfilled the definition of defamation. <\/p>\n

The court found that since Wright could not provide sufficient evidence to prove that he is indeed Satoshi Nakamoto, he must be willing to withstand debate and dissent from people who do not believe him. This conclusion included the order for Wright to pay Hodlonaut\u2019s legal fees of $348,257. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A judgment made in the U.K. found Wright breached an embargo and must pay McMormack\u2019s legal fees.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2520,"featured_media":4257,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[1572,644,93,1628],"class_list":["post-5552","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-legal","tag-courts","tag-craig-wright","tag-news","tag-peter-mccormack"],"author_data":{"id":2520,"name":"Bitcoin Magazine","nicename":"bitcoin-magazine","avatar_url":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/bitcoin-magazine-logo.jpeg"},"featured_image_url":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/regulation-gavel-judge.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5552","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2520"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5552"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5552\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4257"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}