SEC has 3%–14% chance of success in Ripple appeal, lawyers predict

Regulation

The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has a very slim chance of winning the appeal against Ripple in the ongoing lawsuit, according to lawyer Bill Morgan, who has been closely following the lawsuit.

Morgan in a post on X (formerly Twitter) argued that there is no obvious appellable error other than in “Ripple’s favour regarding ODL sales which don’t meet at least two prongs of the Howey test,” while adding there is a very slim chance of about 3% for SEC’s success in getting an appeal against Ripple.

Morgan’s prediction came in repose to another statistic shared by Jeremy Hogan, a prominent attorney, who shared government data on the rate of success of appeals in different types of lawsuits. The data suggest the SEC has a 14.2% chance of winning the appeal against Ripple.

The SEC fought a long-drawn court battle against Ripple for three years before a judge ruled that the sale of XRP on crypto exchanges doesn’t violate securities law. The judgement came as a major win for Ripple, which lost a significant chunk of business post the SEC lawsuit in the U.S. as major crypto exchanges delisted XRP from their platform.

The SEC also lost an appeal against the judgment in which Judge Torres ruled on Oct. 4 that the security regulator failed to meet its burden to show that there were controlling questions of law or substantial grounds for differences of opinion on the ruling.

Related: Lawyers debate over Ripple case after rejection of SEC’s motion for appeal

Later on Oct. 19, the SEC moved to dismiss all the charges filed against Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse and executive chair Chris Larsen, offering another major victory for Ripple and its executives.

Ripple’s chief legal officer Stuart Aldeorty called the SEC’s move “a surrender,” while Ripple in its official statement deemed the SEC’s move as a “stunning capitulation”.

Morgan noted that the SEC has dismissed the rest of the case, so there will be no trial next year and predicted that the court might give a “final judgment (probably) sometime next year.”

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