Ripple v. SEC case update as of May 6, 2024

With the legal dispute between the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Ripple far from over, the blockchain company has filed further support of its motion to strike new expert materials and in reply to the securities watchdog’s opposition to this motion.

Indeed, after the SEC filed its opposition to Ripple’s request to strike the declaration by the regulator’s witness, Andrea Fox, arguing that it did not constitute undisclosed expert testimony, Ripple’s legal team filed a letter in support of its motion, as per the document shared by defense attorney James K. Filan on May 2.

Specifically, the document argues that, in the opposition, on which Finbold reported earlier, the “SEC has failed to show that the Declaration of Andrea Fox (…) is summary evidence rather than expert testimony, or that it was timely under the Court’s scheduling order.”

Ripple’s counter-arguments

As Ripple’s lawyers explained, “Fox is an expert because she purports to use ‘technical or other specialized knowledge’ to ‘help the trier of fact to understand the evidence or to determine a fact in issue.’ She does not merely apply basic arithmetic to Ripple’s financial records,’ as the SEC contends.”

“Rather, she analyzes Ripple’s records, third-party evidence, and expert reports; draws inferences and conclusions about those documents; and calculates disgorgement, prejudgment interest, and discount amounts based on her analysis.”

Upon listing several examples to substantiate that Fox’s declaration is, in fact, an expert testimony, including her qualifications as an accountant as part of her testimony “merely to show that she could do basic arithmetic,” Ripple’s legal team also accused the regulator of using wordplay to argue its side.

“The agency asserts that because it reserved its right to ‘submit the declaration of a summary witness,’ as opposed to ‘serv[ing] a rebuttal expert report,’ it could wait until its remedies motion to do so. If the SEC really meant ‘submit’ to lay the groundwork for a summary witness disclosure after the close of discovery, its proposal was misleading.”

Meanwhile, the deadline for the SEC to file its response is coming up, as Magistrate Judge Sarah Netburn has set it for May 6, 2024. In the view of legal expert Bill Morgan, “Ripple will lose the motion but the judge will accept Fox gave some expert evidence and permit Ripple to depose her.”

At press time, XRP, the token at the center of the Ripple v. SEC courtroom standoff, was trading at $0.54, up 2.57% on the day, gaining 7.78% over the week, as it moves to reverse the loss of 8.89% accumulated in the last month, according to the latest charts retrieved by Finbold on May 6.

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