Our runners-up this week are a team from Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan led by David Grable, Michael Liftik, and Marlo Pecora, who represent Ripple Labs Inc. in an important arm of the battle over whether the cryptocurrency company’s XRP token should be considered a security under U.S. law. Ripple shareholder Tetragon Financial Group Ltd went to the Delaware Court of Chancery demanding its $175 million investment in XRP be returned after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filed its own lawsuit in New York federal court claiming XRP was an unregistered security. But Vice Chancellor Morgan Zurn last week found that the securities default provision in Ripple’s contract with Tetragon had not been triggered since the SEC’s decision to bring an enforcement action wasn’t a “final, authoritative” decision that XRP is, and will remain, a security.
Shout out to John Gleeson from Debevoise & Plimpton and Daniel Ruzumna of Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler who scored a win at the Second Circuit on Tuesday that will effectively bring both firms off the sidelines in a 12-year-old case where the government is seeking forfeiture of an office building at Fifth Avenue and 52nd Street in Manhattan. The Second Circuit ordered the government to return certain seized rents to firms’ clients the Alavi Foundation, a New York not-for-profit founded in 1973, and the 650 Fifth Avenue Company, a partnership where Alavi holds the majority interest. The ruling will allow the firms to continue to litigate allegations that their clients violated economic sanctions against Iran. The Debevoise team also included Winston Paes, Noelle Lyle, Austin Clarke, Elizabeth Costello, and Isabela Garcez. The Patterson Belknap team also included Melissa Ginsberg, Diana Conner, Leigh Barnwell, Tara Norris, and Jacob Tuttle Newman.
