Ripple Vs SEC: Judge Denies SEC Access To Ripple’s Legal Advice

The SEC has been in a legal battle with Ripple for a while, with certain developments seeming to lean in Ripple’s favour.

Last development sees Magistrate Judge Sarah Netburn denying SEC’s request for Ripple “to produce all communications constituting, transmitting, or discussing any legal advice Ripple sought or received as to whether its offers and sales of XRP were or would be subject to federal securities laws”.

The judge’s decision seems to have made Ripple’s fair notice defense stronger. About a month ago, the SEC filed a request to the court demanding to strike the “fair notice” defence from the Ripple case altogether, calling it “legally improper”. Ripple invoked that claiming that SEC failed to warn them (and other market participants) about XRP being an unregistered security.

SEC Attorney Looking At Retiring

According to a report from only a few days ago, one of the SEC’s attorneys, Dugan Bliss, asked to withdraw from the case, leaving SEC.

If Dugan Bliss’s request is granted, the case will go on with the SEC continuing to be represented by Jorge G. Tenreiro, Daphna A. Waxman, Jon A. Daniels and others. The whole operation is being led by SEC attorney Preethi Krishnamurthy.

In April, Dugan Bliss stated that – as far as he knows – the SEC had not yet taken an official position on ETH either.

So I want to make clear that this is my understanding of the current situation and I don’t want to be overly technical, but the SEC, itself, my understanding, it has not taken an official position. There is no action that it took to say Bitcoin is not a security, Ether is not a security.

Dugan Bliss