After the court moved the discovery deadline to January 14, 2022, those following the SEC-Ripple Labs lawsuit can expect to remain silent for the remainder of the year. However, the new developments at the beginning of December caused a stir. Now both the SEC and Ripple need to take action.

Court Ask Ripple and SEC to Provide Document For Entirely Different Lawsuit

A document shared by defense attorney and former federal attorney James K. Filan shows that Judge Sarah Netburn has asked both parties to produce additional documents. However, this is due to the legal development of an entirely different judicial process.

The judge stated that both parties have to submit a letter summary of a maximum of three pages at the same time before December 8, 2021, in order to supplement their argumentation on the defendant’s mandatory application (ECF No. 289).

The Deliberative Process Privilege

The deliberative process privilege will protect the agency’s decision-making process from outside parties – including the accused in court if necessary.

Outside of the cryptocurrency world, the Natural Resources Defense Council is located south of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency [EPA], and the committee is instructed to produce specific documents about its pesticide policy. EPA refuses, and the deliberative process privilege is part of their reason.

The U.S. Appeals Court for the Second District ruled that the EPA is not required to produce all of its records on the role of decision-makers. In addition, the court issued a new ruling on what falls under procedural privileges.

Now Ripple Labs is feeling the waves. After the blockchain company filed a motion to force regulators to provide three-part email documents, the SEC claimed the deliberative process privilege. As previously reported, Ripple claimed that these files appear to be highly relevant to national defense.

Of course, the XRP community has always wanted to know whether this update helps or harms Ripple.

For his part, attorney Jeremy Hogan alleged that he has read the statement and the change in the law slightly favours the SEC but let’s see what the briefing says.

In less than five days, both the SEC and Ripple had to understand the new ruling and quickly put their arguments in place. This had a big impact on Ripple’s application to ask the US Securities and Exchange Commission to hand over these three documents.