Ripple and SEC seek to extend expert discovery
The parties request leave to take to one final expert deposition by agreement on January 19, 2022.
Ripple Labs, the individual defendants Brad Garlinghouse and Chris Larsen, and the Securities and Exchange Commission have come together to jointly request a three-day extension of the expert discovery.
In a letter to Magistrate Sarah Netburn, the parties asked the court to conduct an expert deposition on January 19, 2022, three business days after the existing close of expert discovery.
“One final expert deposition”
“Expert discovery is currently scheduled to close on January 14, 2022. As part of that discovery, the parties have disclosed a total of 16 expert witnesses.
“Depositions for 15 of those 16 experts have been either completed or scheduled to occur by January 14. However, due to conflicts in the schedules of various experts and of the counsel responsible for those depositions, the parties request leave to take to one final expert deposition by agreement on January 19, 2022.”
“If granted, the requested relief would not impact any other deadline in this case.”
The “cryptocurrency lawsuit of the century” has gone quiet for a while now, leaving many to wonder why. It is that expert discover requires little formal back and forth.
A lot has been happening behind the scenes and will remain unknown to the public for some more time.
“A lot of work going on right now”
In mid-November, attorney Jeremy Hogan produced a video explaining what is going on in court at the moment: expert discovery.
“Both parties are conducting expert depositions. There are two kinds of witnesses in a case: fact witness and expert witness. An expert witness is someone who brings a special knowledge or expertise and is allowed to do something very special in court, and that is “giving an opinion”.
“If I was in the witness box and the SEC asked me if I thought if the XRP ledger was decentralized or not, there would be an objection and the Judge would tell me my opinion is irrelevant and I would not be allowed to answer. Only someone with training in decentralized ledger would be allowed to give an opinion”, he explained.
“I am certain that each side, in this case, have listed numerous experts and they will be explaining all the technical aspects of the case to the judge and we can expect each deposition to last all day and each expert must prepare a report of his or her opinion and I wouldn’t be surprised if there are 10 to 15 experts in total on this case. So when adding it all together that’s a lot of work going on right now in the case behind the scenes”.
