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An Australian lawyer has argued that the SEC/Ripple case is legally closed and cannot be reopened using the legal theory of res judicata. According to lawyer Bill Morgan, this principle forbids parties from relitigating claims that a court has already decided.

He underlined that Judge Analisa Torres has already rendered a decision on the primary issues in the case, including the legal status of XRP and Ripple’s various token sales between 2013 and 2020. He contends that since the court resolved these cases on their merits, the SEC is permanently barred from reopening them.

Morgan’s remarks came after the House Democrats chastised SEC Chair Paul Atkins for abandoning over a dozen enforcement actions about cryptocurrencies, including those against Ripple and Binance. The lawmakers asked the SEC to pursue the Justin Sun lawsuit. Morgan retorted that res judicata is applicable once a court renders a final decision, so the SEC cannot just bring back closed cases.

He added that by broadly claiming that XRP itself and several categories of Ripple’s XRP sales constituted securities, the SEC undermined its own position. This tactic enabled Judge Analisa Torres to determine that XRP is not a security in and of itself and to assess various XRP distributions independently.

The SEC consequently lost important claims about the secondary market and programmatic sales. Morgan argues that the res judicata doctrine now prohibits the SEC from relitigating any claims arising from Ripp because those issues have already been decided.