Lawyer accuses IRS of pursuing ‘improper’ summons in Coinbase case

And so the legal fight continues.

Jeffrey Berns, the Los Angeles-based lawyer who attempted to block the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) from issuing a “John Doe” summons on bitcoin wallet service Coinbase is back in court.

If you recall, Berns went to court in December to dispute the legitimacy of the IRS’s effort to obtain the identity and full transaction history of Coinbase customers who bought virtual currency from the wallet service between 2013 and 2015. At the time, Berns, who’s also a Coinbase customer, wanted the court to either quash its previous approval or put in place a protective order to stop the tax agency on its tracks, arguing that the summons “would constitute an abuse of process.”

The IRS, however, turned Berns’ argument against him, pointing that since he already identified himself as a Coinbase user, he’s no longer the subject of the summons or even connected to the matter, and that the issue—as it affects Berns—has effectively been resolved.