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January 4th, 2024
Lynn Johannson, President of E2 Management Corporation and Catalyst for THE Collaboration
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Legal experts say “This Is It” moment for XRP in Ripple lawsuit,
Finance Feeds | Rick Steves | Sep 10, 2021
The SEC has filed a letter in opposition to Ripple’s motion to compel the agency to provide clear answers to its interrogatories.
The plaintiff argued the defendants have waited until the end of fact discovery, more than seven weeks after receiving the SEC’s
first interrogatory responses, to inform the SEC they considered the responses deficient.
The SEC claims it has supplemented five of the responses at issue, met and conferred, and asked Defendants to identify what specific information they still required. “Defendants refused, and instead filed the Motion less than three hours before fact discovery closed.
See: SEC v. Ripple Legal Weeds: SEC caught erasing documents relevant to XRP lawsuit
The agency further added it has substantively answered the interrogatories at issue as required by the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and the Court’s recent guidance that a party “need not catalog every fact or piece of evidence so long as it identifies representative samples and provides…meaningful disclosure.”
“Defendants’ argument here boils down to a complaint that they do not like the answers they received to the interrogatories at issue, in large part because the SEC’s and Defendants’ interpretation of the applicable law differs.”
“But the SEC is not required to answer the interrogatories in a way that adopts Defendants’ incorrect reading of the law. The parties’ dispute as to the correct application of the controlling legal standards should be resolved by Judge Torres at summary judgment, not on a motion to compel interrogatory responses”, the plaintiff wrote in the letter.
Ripple’s interrogatories are aimed at identifying the SEC’s theory of how the Howey Test applies to virtually all of Defendants’ transactions in XRP over the last 8 years.
The creator of the XRP ledger filed its motion to compel slightly after the extensively covered telephone conference which resulted in the Judge being unhappy with the SEC’s arguments and ordering an in-camera review of the documents of which the SEC claims privilege.
See: Coinbase Threat Shows SEC Means Business
In the motion, Ripple stated evasive responses “must be treated as a failure to disclose, answer, or respond”, putting further pressure on the SEC which has been quite evasive in regard to its deliberative process. The motion also shows how the plaintiff has evaded Ripple’s inquiries.
Attorneys recommend SEC provide clear answers under oath for its own sake
Attorneys Jeremy and Thien-Vu Hogan have recently provided an analysis on this new topic: Ripple’s motion to compel answers to interrogatories.
The XRP-friendly stated how important is the pleading, arguing that the SEC will be writing under oath, which will have formal effect and cannot be dismissed as Hinman’s 2018 speech was.
See: Decentralized Finance—Risks, Regulation, and the Road Ahead
“In other words, these answers can be introduced into evidence, quoted at trial, used during closing statement, etc. just like the SEC was on the stand with it’s right hand up in the air.”
“What we can see here in Ripple’s motion to compel answers or better answers to its Interrogatories is the SEC lawyers really struggle to lay out the entirety of its case with any specificity”, said Mr. Hogan in a video.
“So, putting aside whether the SEC has proven or can prove its case with these facts, the question for this motion becomes – is that a good enough answer?”
Mr. Hogan asked, leaving legal expert Thien-Vu Hogan to provide the answer.
“Not specific enough”, Ms. Hogan stated. “I mean, at one point in answering Interrogatory #8, the SEC provides a link to evidence and it’s just a link to Twitter in general. When I clicked on that piece of evidence, I saw a picture of my face – that’s some ugly evidence”.
Continue to the full article --> here
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