Disclosure of documents

Emmott v Michael Wilson Partners [2008] EWCA Civ 184 12 March

The defendant appealed against a decision authorising the disclosure, for the purposes of proceedings in New South Wales and in the British Virgin Islands, of documents generated in an English arbitration. The dispute was between two English solicitors with practices abroad resulting in arbitration proceedings and litigation in England, New South Wales, the British Virgin Islands, Jersey and Colorado. The claimant was concerned that fraud allegations that were dropped in England might continue in New South Wales and the British Virgin Islands using pleadings and documents produced in the arbitration. The judge ordered disclosure on the basis that it was in the interests of justice so that the foreign courts would not be misled, or potentially misled, where the cases that were being advanced in the various proceedings were essentially raising the same or similar allegations.