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U.S. District Court Judge Sarah Netburn denied the SEC's motion in its case against Ripple to protect William Hinman speech-related documents under the attorney-client privilege. Hinman is the former director of the SEC's Division of Corporation Finance.
Another Win For Ripple
On July 13, Defense Attorney James Filan shared the court ruling on the SEC motion to protect the William Hinman speech-related documents under the client-attorney privilege, signifying a big win for Ripple.
"Magistrate judge Netburn denies the SEC's attorney-client privilege claims. The predominant purpose of the communications was not to provide legal advice. The documents must be produced."
https://twitter.com/FilanLaw/status/1546991222463537152 Hinman had said in a June 2018 speech that Ethereum cannot be considered as securities. In light of this, Ripple wants to cross-examine Hinman about the reasoning behind his perspective about Ethereum at the time and then try to apply that same rationale to XRP. This way the deposition could lend itself to Ripple's argument that the XRP token is not a security.
SEC's Long Battle With Ripple
In December 2020, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) agency accused Ripple Labs, Christian Larsen, Ripple co-founder, and Bradley Garlinghouse, Ripple CEO, of privately selling XRP, which according to them is security. SEC quotes the sales of XRP to be illegal and wants the firm to surrender the $1.3 billion fund raised in the token sales. Along with that, the regulatory agency wants to ban all the three above-mentioned participants from further selling tokens in the crypto world.