Here’s How You Can Join John Deaton’s Class Action XRP/SEC Lawsuit!

By ProCoinNews • December 1, 2021 9:04 pm • Comments

Are you an XRP holder?

Have you been injured by the actions of “your” SEC and Jay Clayton and Gary Gensler?

You just might need an attorney.

Trending: Ripple Spells Out Penalty Terms To SEC

And if you think I’m going to use this article as an excuse to show you perhaps my favorite TV ad of all time….you’d be right.

Because if John Deaton is not the hero we all need and deserve, then it’s most definitely LarryGreenofBergerandGreen.

Watch:

Backup here:

But let’s get serious now for a minute…because this actually is a very serious topic.

On December 20, 2020 the SEC sued Ripple Labs Inc. and Brad Garlinghouse and Chris Larsen, sending XRP into a downward spiral, locking accounts on Coinbase and elsewhere as un-tradable, and artificially decreasing the value of XRP while the rest of the crypto-community has has new all-time highs.

Have you been damaged?

Have we all been damaged?

60,000 people (and counting) think so and they’ve joined a Class Action lawsuit filed by attorney John Deaton

You can join the lawsuit by filling out this very simple and short form right here:  https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeiZEAsfYAvQgYytwZ8ZcK2xLe7qlX3D9EB0-NUGIz3_-nARQ/viewform

Fox News recently covered Deaton’s lawsuit in their “Opus” report on the XRP saga.

Here is a snippet from that article about Deaton and the case so far:

“I think I’m going to sue the SEC,” John Deaton groaned as he read the news just before Christmas in 2020 that Wall Street’s top cop had filed securities violation charges against Ripple, and its top executives for failing to register sales of the XRP digital coin as a security.

Just days after the SEC case, Deaton, a relatively unknown litigator in Providence, Rhode Island, filed one of his own, a class-action suing the commission for overstepping its authority in declaring XRP a security.

“In January, someone asked me how long I’ve been practicing securities law,” Deaton said. “My response: Two weeks.”

The case is ongoing and currently seeking class-action status.

Deaton’s journey into securities law is certainly unconventional. The 53-year-old former U.S. Marine attorney was now in private practice specializing mostly in asbestos-related litigation. He never argued a securities-law case, though he liked to invest. After reading Satoshi Nakamoto’s famous Bitcoin treatise, he got hooked on crypto, actively trading bitcoin, ethereum, and most recently the XRP digital coin because he considered it the most user-friendly of all the cryptos to trade.

“When I purchased XRP, it appeared in my wallet immediately,” Deaton tells FOX Business. “The others took hours to clear.”

But XRP would have other more significant problems as a target of a high-profile SEC regulatory action. After the SEC filed the case, XRP fell 70% in just a few days. Today it trades around $1 after hitting a high of $3.84 in 2018.

Deaton was incensed as he watched his $600,000 in XRP go up in smoke. But as he began to read up on securities law, he quickly concluded that he had a case since the SEC’s actions while directed at Ripple and its leadership, had a more disparate impact, crushing passive holders of XRP who aren’t involved in the company’s platform.

“It’s one thing for the SEC to sue Ripple for what they did,” he said. “But they were now attacking XRP holders who bought the crypto in the secondary market without knowledge of what Ripple was doing.”

Deaton is certainly no Ripple fanboy. He is critical of the fact that Ripple itself has sold about $800 million in XRP since the SEC’s lawsuit.

Nor is he a big fan of the regulatory apparatus surrounding XRP. “If the SEC really believes XRP is an unregistered security, why are they allowing the sale of the token during an ongoing lawsuit?” he said.

In the case of Bill Hinman, the former corporation finance chief under Clayton and a key architect of the SEC’s past views on crypto, Deaton says regulatory filings show that he received $15 million while at the SEC from his previous law firm, Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, the same Simpson Thacher & Bartlett that is part of the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance. Plus, Hinman rejoined the firm in his post-SEC career. (A person close to Hinman says this money was part of Hinman’s pension from the firm and he had no idea the law firm was part of the alliance while at the SEC).

Deaton also says that the former head of SEC enforcement when the Ripple lawsuit was brought, Marc Berger, left the commission just three weeks later to join Simpson, Thacher & Bartlett. Berger didn’t return calls for comment and Hinman had no comment on this matter.

One additional coincidence involves the nation’s biggest bank, JPMorgan, which sold its digital token, the JPMorgan coin, to ConsenSys in August 2020. Deaton says that JPMorgan coin is a direct competitor to XRP; ConsenSys and JPMorgan are also members of the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance. He also pointed out that Clayton’s old and new law firm, Sullivan & Cromwell, advised ConenSys on the deal.

Drawing attention to these issues on social media and in the press has transformed Deaton from obscurity to celebrity in the XRP community. He is a frequent podcast guest where he expounds about the inequities of the case including how he believes many members of the regulatory community have close ties to XRP’s competitors.

His website, CryptoLaw, has become the go-to place for XRP holders to get information on SEC crypto enforcement actions.

Deaton’s once relatively small Twitter following has exploded to over 140,000 followers, and the class he’s seeking to represent in his suit against the SEC (the case has yet to officially certified) has grown from a relative handful to 62,000 XRP holders.

On Oct. 5, a federal judge granted Deaton permission to enter the SEC case as amicus curiae (“friends of the court”) and represent the interest of XRP holders. The judge said Deaton’s knowledge of XRP will help educate the court on how the lawsuit has harmed both individuals and businesses.

Not bad for a guy who just started practicing securities law.

Here’s more about attorney John Deaton from his website DeatonLawFirm:

John Deaton, Managing Partner of the Deaton Law Firm, founded his law practice in 2006.

Prior to establishing DLF, John worked for a national plaintiffs’ firm, specializing in asbestos litigation, products liability, toxic torts, and personal injury. John also served as one of the firm’s principal trial attorneys in New York, Rhode Island, and Connecticut. John tried cases against national defense lawyers, litigation firms, and high profile corporations.

He earned a reputation as an aggressive but fair trial advocate.Prior to his work as a plaintiffs’ attorney, John joined the United States Marine Corp while in law school. In 1994, he was commissioned a Second Lieutenant. John served as a federal prosecutor and a criminal defense attorney for seven years of active duty. He tried dozens of jury trials to verdict throughout his career. As a direct result of his efforts, John was awarded the Meritorious Service Medal and Navy Marine Corps Commendation Medal, and was selected to the rank of Major.John attended law school at the New England School of Law and graduated Cum Laude in 1995.

At New England School of Law, John received the American Jurisprudence Award for Clinical Evidence and was selected for the law school’s National Mock Trial Team, an honor awarded to few. John graduated Magna Cum Laude from Eastern Michigan University in 1989. John’s decision to open his own asbestos litigation firm was driven by his desire to give each and every client individual attention.

Despite what larger firms may promise, it is only in a small firm that each attorney and staff member will know you by name and give your case the personal attention it deserves. At the Deaton Law Firm, John Deaton will be your primary trial attorney.

And here is a recent interview with Deaton that contains a lot of additional information about the lawsuit.

Watch here:

Join the lawsuit here:  https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeiZEAsfYAvQgYytwZ8ZcK2xLe7qlX3D9EB0-NUGIz3_-nARQ/viewform

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