In what is the latest development in the legal battle between the United States SEC and Ripple Labs, the former seems to have finally scored a minor victory.
Choose Sarah Netburn has ordered Ripple to provide extra Slack messages from a wider group of custodians. The SEC had previously filed a petition demanding Ripple employees hand over their Slack communications. In accordance with the SEC’s estimates, there are over one million messages to be assessed since Ripple staff often communicated by way of Slack.
While the SEC has claimed that the defendants agreed to produce this information at the beginning of the discovery phase, they later termed this train an “in depth and expensive fishing expedition” that may take up important time and sources.
Because Ripple found this information “neither critical nor uniquely relevant,” the regulatory body had previously demanded an emergency conference on the matter. Nonetheless, Choose Netburn felt no want for a similar and issued the latest order as text-only.
According to the text, Ripple now has to produce Slack messages from 22 custodians listed out by the SEC. The order additional dominated that Slack messages are related to each the events and Ripple’s perceived burden is outweighed by its earlier settlement to provide the identical. It additional learn,
“The Slack messages sought are relevant to the parties’ claims and defenses and proportional to the needs of the case. Any burden to Ripple is outweighed by its earlier settlement to provide the related Slack messages, the relative sources of the events, and the quantity in controversy.”
In the past, Ripple had argued that it would be an “undue burden” if it produced terabytes of data pertaining to those Slack messages. In the same, the agency had that Ripple’s refusal comes from its own “mistakes in gathering that data.” A couple of Slack messages, nevertheless, did provide the fee “critically essential data.”
During a conference call held on 31 August regarding the SEC’s privilege dispute, the judge also ordered the regulatory watchdog to produce internal documents regarding discussions over the nature of XRP and ETH, for which she will hold an in-camera review.
Many within the crypto-community have identified that this represents the unbiasedness of Choose Netburn. Others have speculated that this discovery wouldn’t amount to much since anything the employees might have said would be deemed irrelevant if they were unaware about XRP being a security or not.
In one other improvement associated to the case, Choose Netburn additionally denied the movement filed by the Chamber of Digital Commerce’s counsel to look as ‘amicus curiae’, or ‘pal of the courtroom.’ The in-text order observed that “the attorney did not represent a movant or party in the case” and hence, the motion was being removed from the case docket.
