Butler v. Fidelity Management & Research Company LLC et al

Background

The defendants—Fidelity Management & Research Company LLC, Fidelity Digital Asset Services LLC, Fidelity Brokerage Services LLC, Fidelity Institutional Asset Management, and Fidelity Management Trust Company—asked the court to postpone the initial pretrial conference and related filing deadlines. They also asked the court to stay, or pause, discovery while their motion to dismiss the complaint was pending.

The defendants said they had filed the motion to dismiss the entire complaint on November 14, 2025. According to their letter, the complaint concerns three types of accounts: brokerage accounts, a cryptocurrency account, and retirement accounts.

Defendants’ stated grounds

For the brokerage-account claims, the defendants argued that arbitration clauses in customer agreements barred the claims. For the cryptocurrency-account claims, they argued that the allegations were implausible, including allegations that the plaintiff obtained nearly $3 billion in Bitcoin through a $450 purchase and then obtained more than $9 million by selling Bitcoin worth $480 the next day. They alternatively argued that those claims failed to state a legal claim and were barred by arbitration.

For the retirement-account claims, the defendants argued that the claims were preempted—displaced by a federal law governing employee benefit plans—and that the complaint did not allege exhaustion of administrative remedies.

Requested discovery stay

The defendants argued that a discovery stay was appropriate because their motion allegedly showed that the claims lacked merit, discovery could impose significant burdens on the defendants and third parties, and the case was at an early stage. They also argued that discovery could undermine the benefits of arbitration if some claims were required to proceed in arbitration. The letter states that no prior request for this relief had been made and that the plaintiff had not responded to defense counsel’s effort to schedule a telephone call.

Court’s action

The court’s order states that the plaintiff may respond to the defendants’ request to stay discovery by December 5, 2025. The text provided does not expressly state that the court granted or denied the discovery-stay request, and it does not expressly state the disposition of the request to postpone the initial pretrial conference.

Judge Ronnie Abrams therefore took the procedural action expressly shown in the text: setting a deadline for Butler’s response to the discovery-stay request. The underlying motion to dismiss was not decided in the provided text.