The legal battle between San Francisco-based blockchain startup Ripple Labs and the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) might soon come to an end.
A document recently released on Twitter by Ripple’s legal counsel, attorney Jeremy Hogan, reveals that the blockchain company expects the legal case to be resolved sometime between August 26 and November 18, 2022.
When will Ripple v. SEC case end?
Ripple thinks it will end sometime between Aug. 26 and Nov. 18.
In its pending class action, Ripple agreed to move the case start back to Nov. 18 in belief that the SEC case will be finished before then.
Of course, it can settle ANYTIME. pic.twitter.com/fVawdduiNs
— Jeremy Hogan (@attorneyjeremy1) March 6, 2022
Per the document, Ripple requested that its other legal case with the SEC, the class action, begin by November because of the overlap of factual and legal issues between this lawsuit and the SEC case.
Hence, rescheduling the date from August to November will “reduce the burden on the parties, streamline discovery in this case, and potentially reduce the burden on the court by narrowing the issues in dispute,” since the SEC’s issue would have likely ended by then.
In a different tweet, Hogan stated that Ripple believes it will win the SEC case in September or October, after which the class action will automatically end due to collateral estoppel. Collateral estoppel is a law-related doctrine that prevents a party from pursuing a legal issue resolved in a previous lawsuit, even if the issue has to do with a different claim.
SEC vs. Ripple Legal Battle, Over a Year Old
Ripple has been at loggerheads with the US SEC since December 2020, when the capital markets regulator filed a lawsuit against the start-up and two of its executives.
The SEC claimed that since 2013, Ripple had raised over $1.3 billion by conducting unlawful sales of the crypto token, XRP, to investors in the US and in other countries. The SEC further claimed that the company promoted the sales and boosted the value of XRP by using billions of the tokens that they established in order to get labor and market-making services
The regulatory body alleged that major executives of Ripple, Chris Larsen and Brad Garlinghouse liquidated their own XRP assets for $600 million and failed to register any of the sales with the SEC. Ripple, however, disputed the claims, saying that in the past, US regulators considered XRP as a currency rather than a security, as the SEC alleged.
