diff --git a/DESCRIPTION b/DESCRIPTION
index 9180056..6718671 100644
--- a/DESCRIPTION
+++ b/DESCRIPTION
@@ -1,7 +1,7 @@
 Package: boxr
 Type: Package
 Title: Interface for the 'Box.com API'
-Version: 0.3.6.9011
+Version: 0.3.6.9012
 Authors@R: c(
     person("Brendan", "Rocks", email = "foss@brendanrocks.com",
            role = c("aut")),
@@ -43,7 +43,7 @@ Imports:
     magrittr,
     mime,
     purrr,
-    rio,
+    rio (>= 0.5.18),
     rlang,
     stats,
     stringr,
diff --git a/NEWS.md b/NEWS.md
index 433cd5b..9563269 100644
--- a/NEWS.md
+++ b/NEWS.md
@@ -6,6 +6,8 @@
 
 ## Internal
 
+* update minimum version of rio package to reflect newer treatment of JSON files. (#261)
+
 * remove unused internal function, removing dependency on httpuv package. (#259)
 
 * update superseded function-calls from gargle, used in testing. (#251)
diff --git a/R/boxr_read.R b/R/boxr_read.R
index fd0fdf3..b104d2a 100644
--- a/R/boxr_read.R
+++ b/R/boxr_read.R
@@ -97,15 +97,6 @@ box_read <- function(file_id, type = NULL, version_id = NULL,
     cont <- read_fun(temp_file_new, ...)
   }
   
-  # this code comment is old (i think) and maybe worth revisiting was rio goes to CRAN (NCD 2019-11-01)
-  # \/
-  # rio is imposing the data.frame class on .json files, which isn't lolz.
-  # So, if it's classed as a data.frame but doesn't have the 'row.names'
-  # attribute, unclass it
-  if ("data.frame" %in% class(cont) & is.null(attr(cont, "row.names"))) {
-    cont <- unclass(cont)
-  }
-  
   message(
     "Remote file '", filename, "' read into memory as an object of class ", 
     paste(class(cont), collapse = ", "),