The legal battle between the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Ripple saw new activity yesterday. Ripple Labs Inc., CEO Brad Garlinghouse, and Executive Chairman Chris Larsen filed an opposition response to the SEC’s motion to seal certain documents related to the parties’ summary judgment motion.
Also, the SEC has filed a response to its partial opposition to Ripple’s motion to seal certain documents related to the summary judgment.
Ripple And SEC Continue To Fight Hinman Docs
In addition to minor battle lines, both sides primarily oppose the sealing of the Hinman documents in summary. As XRP community advocate Bill Hinman says explainedRipple, as expected, opposed the sealing of the Hinman documents, claiming that the documents were relevant beyond their relevance to impeachment.
For this, the company said that the presumption of public access to court documents is strongest now that the case has progressed to the summary judgment stage.
Second, Ripple argues that the Hinman documents are court documents that should not be sealed for no good reason:
The SEC still seeks to protect from public view the names and identifying information of witnesses whose testimony the SEC intends to rely on to prove its case, without identifying compelling interests that indicate that such confidentiality is required.
According to Morgan’s analysis, the US Securities and Exchange Commission is again trying to deny the deliberative process privilege (DPP). This means that despite losing the motion, the SEC continues to insist that Hinman’s former director’s documents are irrelevant to the case.
To counter this, Ripple cited the Gannett Media Corp. case last month, which supported its argument against sealing on this ground. In that case, the Second Circuit rejected the notion that “public privacy concerns” or the need to “protect the robust and honest functioning of the internal processes of the Department of Justice” were sufficient to justify a motion to seal by the Department of Justice.
Ripple accused the SEC of also withholding public documents that the court had spoken about. As Bitcoinist reported, Ripple scored an important partial victory at the end of September when Judge Torres ruled that the SEC must turn over documents.
Since then, the XRP community has been confused about what was in the document and that Hinman did not only mention Ethereum in the document, but also XRP; even if only with a side note.
As Jeremy Hogan, another popular community lawyer notedThe decision day on whether the public will see the Hinman documents is approaching:
Will the Court compel the SEC to release Hinman’s emails to the public? We need to know quickly…
At press time, XRP was trading at $0.3486 after the price rejected the key resistance of $0.3568 yesterday.
Option image from Fox Business, Chart from TradingView.com