Florida Judge Rules in Favor of Digital Artist Danny Casale in Breach of Contract Suit
Digital artist Danny Casale has emerged victorious in a breach of contract suit filed by web3 collective DigiART. The suit alleged that Casale and DigiART had a year-long profit-sharing agreement on the initial drops of Casale’s NFT projects. However, the case centered around a crucial omission in the contract—the absence of a start date.
According to DigiART’s claims, Casale had granted the company exclusive rights to market and sell any NFTs he created between May 2021 and May 2, 2022. In return, Casale would split the net profits of his NFTs equally with DigiART, while secondary-market royalties would go directly to Casale.
In her judgment, Judge Wendy Berger detailed the events leading to the lawsuit and her reasons for ruling in favor of Casale. Marcel Katz, Casale’s “east coast representative” for his physical artworks through his company Art Plug, proposed a second partnership focused solely on NFT sales called DigiART. Casale accepted the proposal.
After reaching an agreement on profit-sharing and secondary sales, a DigiART representative sent Casale a draft agreement via email. While the email contained details about the profit-sharing structure, it lacked a start date. Casale signed the agreement on April 30, 2021, with the start date left blank.
A few days later, Katz filled in the start date as May 2, 2021, in the contract that was now shared with Casale. However, Casale had to wait 10 months to receive his countersigned copy of the agreement.
In March 2021, three months before the DigiART agreement, Casale launched the NFT project known as “Coolman’s Universe.” DigiART’s complaint alleged that Katz, operating under the Casale/DigiART agreement, actively promoted Casale and his work, including hosting a pop-up in Miami’s design district during Miami Art Week. The pop-up featured the “world’s most expensive cup of coffee” priced at $1,000 per paper cup, each featuring an original artwork by Casale.
“Coolman’s Universe” consisted of 10,000 NFTs valued at over ETH 18,000 ($50 million) on the online trading platform OpenSea. Despite the project’s start date being a subject of contention, DigiART claimed that Casale breached his obligations by engaging in sales after signing the agreement.
Casale argued that neither Katz nor DigiART informed him about the alleged breach or contractual obligations despite their awareness of “Coolman’s Universe.” The ruling stated that “DigiART admits that it did not inform [Casale] that his release would be a violation of any agreement until months after it became aware of the Coolman NFT Project.”
Ultimately, the court dismissed DigiART’s claims that Casale fraudulently induced the company to spend time, money, and energy building his brand and promoting his work, as well as withholding millions of dollars in profits. The judge’s ruling stated that “presence of blanks in a contract is fatal to the enforcement.”
Neither DigiART nor their attorneys have responded to requests for comment on the ruling.
