XRP Lawsuit: Defense Lawyer James Filan Criticizes The SEC’s One Line Response

August 9, 2022 10:05 pm Comments

Previously in the SEC vs Ripple lawsuit, Ripple aimed at getting the SEC to start authenticating videos of SEC officials’ speeches.

This way, the public remarks of SEC officials could be used as information for the lawsuit.

Of course, the SEC had refused to authenticate any videos of their officials speaking which certainly did not help the case progress.

Today, it has been revealed what the SEC’s response is to Ripple’s request and their response essentially said nothing.

Basically, the SEC just gave a simple one line response that said “The SEC says it takes no position on Ripple’s request to reopen fact discovery.”

U.today reports:

Earlier, Ripple defendants sought permission to serve non-party subpoenas to authenticate videos of seven SEC officials’ public remarks in connection with previous RFAs (request for admissions).

In the brief submitted to Magistrate Sarah Netburn, Ripple lawyers state that the SEC has not consented to this and, specifically, “The SEC communicated to the defendants that it would only consent if the defendants agreed to reopen discovery.”

Ripple, however, maintained that the two subpoenas it sought the court’s permission to serve were not a reopening of discovery. James K. Filan asserts this, stating: “As Ripple stated in the original request, the subpoenas Ripple seeks permission to serve are not a reopening of discovery but relate back to RFAs Ripple served before the end of fact discovery and which are needed to effectuate Judge Netburn’s Order.”

According to defense lawyer James Filan, this one liner response by the SEC was once again a delay tactic that is abusing the judicial process and wasting valuable court time.

After all, it apparently took the SEC 5 whole days just to file this single one line response which did not say anything meaningful.

Even layer Jeremy Hogan was somewhat surprised with the SEC’s reply brief and commented that it looked as if the SEC’s legal team just decided to take the easy way out rather than try to argue their position.

As a result, Hogan commented that the SEC seems to be acting strange recently despite the fact that the lawsuit is quickly approaching the two year mark which will be around the end of the year.

U.today concludes:

According to the defense lawyer, the SEC’s one-line response was “simply an abuse of the judicial process and a waste of the court’s time, as evidenced by the fact that the SEC waited five days to file a one-sentence response, which the SEC then misconstrued Ripple’s original request.”

XRP-friendly lawyer Jeremy Hogan claims he is stumped in the one-sentence response: “I’m at a loss on this one sentence Reply Brief. My instinct is that Att’y Guerrier realized how bad he would look if he actually tried to argue the SEC’s position and so he took the easy way out. I think it’s fair to say the lawyering from the SEC has been…strange recently.”

In other news, CryptoLaw founder John Deaton still believes that the SEC’s claims over XRP being a security were “absurd” in respect of Robinhood’s XLM listing. XRP-friendly attorney Fred Rispoli likewise spoke along these same lines.

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