Forex trader Justin LeBlanc, who has been accused of unjust enrichment from an order execution error on FOREX.com, a platform operated by GAIN Capital, has responded to the complaint against him.
In his response, submitted on July 10, 2023 at the New York Southern District Court, LeBlanc argues that GAIN Capital’s claims against him have no merit.
This case arises from a single trading session where LeBlanc placed orders and trades for currency on April 1, 2021 using GAIN’s online trading platform. The complaint alleges that after 184 trades over the course of a single hour”Mr. LeBlanc amassed $712,135.90 but that stale prices became stuck in GAIN’s trading platform and that Mr. Leblanc should have known about them and voluntarily ceased trading.
Ultimately, the Complaint seeks to hold LeBlanc responsible for its own decision to accept and process each of the 184 trades made by LeBlanc on April 1, 2021, and to claw back all of the profits he earned from that trading session.
The defendant argues that this case must have been commenced “within one (1) year after the cause of any such Proceeding shall have arisen” without exception, in line with the customer agreement he had signed with GAIN. GAIN’s causes of action all center around Mr. LeBlanc’s trading during a single hour on April 1, 2021. Thus, to be timely, Plaintiff had to bring its claims by April 1, 2022. GAIN, however, filed this action on May 2, 2023—over 13 months too late. For this reason, the Complaint must be dismissed in its entirety.
The defendant goes on to say that GAIN’s claims are also independently deficient.
Section 3.4 of the Agreement warns: “Although a Spot Rate is specified upon entry of certain types of Orders” limit Orders may be “filled at . . . substantially different Spot Rate[s].” And Section 4.1 provides “FOREX.com makes no warranty, express or implied, that Bid Prices and Ask Prices represent prevailing bid prices and ask prices.”
Thus, allegations that Mr. LeBlanc somehow breached the Covenant because his bid prices were not questioned after GAIN accepted them at non-prevailing rates fails to state a claim because this very conduct was expressly anticipated by the Agreement.
Further, page 11 of the Agreement warns Mr. Leblanc that he shouldn’t “use or rely on [FOREX.com’s] Trading Tools.” Yet GAIN now claims that Mr. LeBlanc breached the Covenant by doing exactly what the Agreement tells him to do–i.e., not relying on FOREX.com’s live market prices displayed on its trading tools.
The lawsuit continues at the New York Southern District Court.
