Securities and Exchange Commission v. Ripple Labs Inc.
- Analisa Torres
- 1:20-cv-10832
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 2
In Securities and Exchange Commission v. Ripple Labs, Judge Netburn partly granted and partly denied the SEC’s discovery motion.
The SEC received permission for five additional depositions and additional document searches, while Ripple must conduct the ordered searches. Ripple did not have to search its general counsels’ records or produce the requested lobbying documents, and the SEC’s requests for a sixth deposition and post-complaint documents were denied without prejudice.
What happened
In Securities and Exchange Commission v. Ripple Labs, Inc., the Securities and Exchange Commission asked the court for additional depositions and documents from Ripple Labs, Inc. during discovery.
The court allowed five additional depositions and ordered Ripple to search for responsive documents from Ryan Zagone and Cameron Kinloch. It rejected the SEC’s requests concerning a sixth deposition, searches of Ripple’s general counsels’ records, documents created after the complaint, and Ripple’s lobbying efforts.
The court granted in part and denied in part the SEC’s motion. Judge Sarah Netburn denied the sixth-deposition request and the post-complaint-document request without prejudice, denied the other requests, and granted the requests for five depositions and two additional document searches.
The detailed version
- Securities and Exchange Commission v. Ripple Labs Inc. · No. 1:20-cv-10832
- Analisa Torres
- June 15, 2021
Background
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed a discovery motion seeking four forms of relief: permission to take six additional depositions; an order requiring Ripple Labs, Inc. (Ripple) to search the records of five additional custodians; production of documents concerning transactions and efforts involving XRP after the complaint was filed; and production of documents concerning Ripple’s lobbying efforts.
Rulings on the Requests
The court granted the SEC permission to take five additional depositions of Christian Gil, Ron Will, Ethan Beard, Phil Rapoport, and Ryan Zagone. It denied without prejudice the request for a sixth deposition under Rule 30(b)(6), which permits a deposition of an organization through a designated representative. The court found that the request was not ready for decision because the record did not identify the topics for the deposition or explain why it had not been included among the first ten depositions.
The court ordered Ripple to search for responsive documents from Ryan Zagone and Cameron Kinloch. It denied the request to require searches of Ripple’s general counsels’ and deputy general counsel’s records, finding those searches highly burdensome, likely to produce mostly privileged communications, and unreasonably cumulative or duplicative of searches already performed.
The court denied without prejudice the request for documents created after the complaint was filed. It stated that the SEC could renew that request after the parties exchanged expert reports if Ripple’s expert relied on documents that fairness required the SEC to review. The court denied the request for documents concerning Ripple’s lobbying efforts, concluding that those efforts were not relevant to Ripple’s fair-notice defense and that any relevance was outweighed by the burden of production.
Disposition
The court granted in part and denied in part the SEC’s discovery motion. The order was signed by Sarah Netburn, United States Magistrate Judge.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.