First of all, it's not about money and previous case was solved by court and court ordered that projects to pay that penalty to finish that case.
I don't know much about the continuation of the XRP case with the SEC. But if paying a fine can solve the XRP case, why don't they do it right away?
I think they have the power for that. After all, the public want XRP and the SEC to solve the problem so not many people doubt the future of XRP. If this case drag on then there is a possibility that the exchange will suspend XRP trading and it is much worse than we imagined.