Attorney Brett Carter had filed the lawsuit in chancery court alleging a "willful" violation of the Tennessee Open Records Act over the state finance and revenue departments' refusal to disclose details about how they decided to draft the Revenue Modernization Act that Haslam has proposed to lawmakers this year. Haslam announced last year that he was commissioning a study of Tennessee's revenue system to try to explain the volatility of business tax collections, but his lawyers said no single study was produced by the analysis and that other records were protected by an open records exemption for taxpayer-related materials. Releasing documents related to studying the state's tax system "would have a chilling effect on the department's ability to engage in frank discussion about policy options, and in particular about policy options that could be unpopular with or opposed by various groups or industry segments," Roberts said in the filing.