NBA legend Shaq wins partial victory in Astral NFT legal battle, but his fight is not over yet

NBA legend Shaquille O’Neal, also known as Shaq, has to defend itself in a class action lawsuit against allegations related to its involvement in the non-fungible token project Astrals.

What happened: A U.S. court has partially granted and partially dismissed a class action lawsuit against O'Neal regarding his role in the NFT project, Coindesk reported Monday.

The project, which included a collection of 10,000 NFT 3D avatars and a decentralized autonomous organization to incubate innovative projects, is at the center of the lawsuit.

The lawsuit alleges that O'Neal, who was the face of Astrals, encouraged investors to join the project. The lawsuit further alleges that O'Neal abandoned the project after the cryptocurrency exchange collapsed. FTX-Trading, This resulted in a significant loss in value of Astrals’ financial products.

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The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, Miami Division, dismissed the claim that O'Neal was a “control person” but upheld the claim that Astrals sold unregistered “securities.”

Why it is important: The legal dispute has been going on for over a year. The plaintiff Daniel Harper claimed that O'Neal was aware of the potential regulatory concerns associated with selling unregistered securities, but promoted them nonetheless to grow his cryptocurrency business.

The former NBA star had previously been sued for his alleged involvement in advertising for FTX, the trading platform that went bankrupt in the fall of 2022. O'Neal said he was merely a paid spokesperson for a commercial.

O'Neal was not the only sports star involved in a legal battle involving NFTs. Football superstar Cristiano Ronaldo was named in a $1 billion class action lawsuit for allegedly investing in unregistered securities on the Binance BNB/USD Network.

Price promotion: At the time of writing, Solana’s floor price is USD/CHFThe price of the Astrals-based NFT collection was $17.16, up nearly 4% in the last 24 hours, according to CoinGecko.

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Disclaimer: This content was created in part with the help of Benzinga Neuro and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors.

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