US judge Sarah Netburn has ordered Ripple to deliver one million Slack messages. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has asked about this before, but Ripple has so far refused to cooperate.
But despite Ripple’s protests that complying with the injunction would cost up to $1 million, the judge deemed the reports crucial and unique evidence to the SEC’s ongoing lawsuit against the multi-billion dollar company for selling unregistered securities.
Messages are relevant to the lawsuit
The SEC filed a lawsuit on December 20 against Ripple and CEOs Christian Larsen and Bradley Garlinghouse for selling the coin XRP as an unregistered security (security).
As proof of this, the SEC is happy to have access to 1 million internal Slack messages from Ripple employees. Slack is a chat service for organizations that Ripple apparently also uses.
According to the SEC, quoted in Law360, the messages between Ripple employees are “relevant to the claims and defenses of the parties, and are commensurate with the needs of the case.” In addition to all Slack messages, Ripple must also deliver all emails from more than 22 email services.
Learn more about XRP’s role at Ripple
Ripple previously refused to cooperate with the SEC’s request. But according to the SEC, this was “deeply disadvantageous,” as they believe the posts can provide crucial information:
“These posts include: (a) discussions of Ripple’s desire to create speculative trading in XRP, (b) the effect of Ripple’s announcements, efforts on, and Ripple’s concerns about the price of XRP, its relationship, and the centrality of the sale. of XRP for Ripple, and (d) the regulatory status of XRP.”
Ripple argued that it was unfair and unreasonable to deliver the messages at a cost of up to $1 million over many months. Judge Netburn responded that the cost to Ripple to deliver the messages does not outweigh its importance to the case.
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