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After the presiding judge in the legal battle between Ripple and the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) ruled on both parties’ motions to preclude certain experts’ testimony, pro-Ripple lawyers believe that the decision could prove disastrous for the regulator’s summary judgment motion.
As it happens, Scott Chamberlain, a former attorney and co-founder of the permissionless Layer 2 platform Evernode XRPL, shared his key takeaways on District Judge Analisa Torres’s ruling, in which he singled out the exclusion of one specific witness as “fatal to SEC,” on March 7.
2. The caveat: the SEC’s expert had his testimony on why people bought XRP excluded. It’s unclear what if any evidence remains on record to support the SEC argument that anyone bought XRP expecting profits solely or substantially from Ripple’s efforts. This might be fatal to SEC.
— Scott Chamberlain (@scotty2ten) March 7, 2023
His views were echoed by the legal expert and amicus curiae for Ripple, John E. Deaton, who agreed with Chamberlain’s analysis and expressed his opinion that “the expert’s preclusion is fatal for the SEC’s summary judgment motion,” which he later told Fox Business’ Charles Gasparino could arrive “any day now or in a couple of weeks.”
I agree with this 💯 In fact, I decided to do a live stream that just ended discussing the possibility or maybe likelihood of a jury trial to prepare folks. Scott’s analysis is on 🎯 and I believe the expert’s preclusion is fatal for the SEC’s summary judgment motion. https://t.co/uR6n98TOeS
— John E Deaton (@JohnEDeaton1) March 7, 2023
Problem with expert witness
As Deaton pointed out in the interview on March 8, Ripple had ten expert witnesses, while the SEC had five, challenged by both sides respectively, and the victory for the blockchain company was the exclusion of the witness “who was going to testify as to what XRP token holders thought in their heads when they purchased XRP.
“Of course, he never interviewed a single XRP holder in his entire career, and he received a $3 million contract from – guess who – the SEC to serve as a witness. So the judge excluded that part of his testimony.“
Meanwhile, he remains a strong believer that Ripple would win the case. His words arrive days after the blockchain company’s CEO Brad Garlinghouse once again questioned the SEC’s conduct, terming its recent onslaught against the crypto industry as an unhealthy way to regulate it.
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