Not long after blockchain company Ripple and the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) agreed on the proposed schedule of 90 days to conduct settlement discussions, Judge Analisa Torres set the specific dates in line with the warring parties’ proposition.
Specifically, they have until February 12, 2024, to complete remedies-related discovery; the SEC can file its brief by March 13, 2024; Ripple has until April 12 to file its opposition, and then the regulator can reply by April 29, 2024, according to the court documents shared by defense attorney James K. Filan on November 13.
According to legal expert Jeremy Hogan, this means that a final judgment will not arrive before July 2024, but he also noted that the “defense has whittled the case down to only 20% of what it used to be,” thanks to including “TOP lawyers” and wondered how much of the case would still be standing by July in an X post published on November 14.
Indeed, both the blockchain company and the SEC have earlier agreed on the proposed schedule for settlement discussions, particularly the 90 days to conduct remedies-related discovery, as long as the regulator limits this discovery to the period before the lawsuit, as Finbold reported on November 10.
What these talks involve
To be more specific, the settlements phase, which aims to put an end to the long-running legal drama that, according to Ripple’s CEO, has cost the company over $100 million in legal expenses, involves an exchange of information to determine the amount of damages that Ripple would have to pay.
As a reminder, the only left to resolve after the lawsuit officially ended was the amount of damages that the blockchain company would have to pay, taking into account that Judge Torres only declared that the sales of XRP to retail buyers (as opposed to institutional buyers) did not constitute securities sales.
More recently, lawyer Bill Morgan refuted that XRP was not a commodity, arguing that the Judge separated it from the contract, transaction, or selling scheme by stating it was “not necessarily a security” and listing assets in which the “subject of the investment contract was a standalone commodity, which was not itself inherently an investment contract.”
Meanwhile, the XRP token was at press time trading at the price of $0.6662, up 1.14% on the day, down 3.89% across the previous week while still maintaining a significant increase of 36.93% accumulated on its monthly chart, as per the most recent data retrieved on November 14.
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