A newspaper sought disclosure of witness statements and other papers lodged at the court in the course of proceedings but not yet used in court.
Held: The application was refused.
Leggatt J said: ‘When a witness statement forms part of the evidence given at a trial, the principle of open justice requires that a member of the public or press who wishes to do so should be able to read the statement – in just the same way as they would have been entitled to hear the evidence if it had been given orally at a public hearing in court. That is the rationale for the right of a member of the public under CPR 32.13 to inspect a witness statement once it stands as evidence in chief during the trial, unless the court otherwise directs. But there is no corresponding right or reason why a member of the public or press should be entitled to obtain copies of witness statements before they have become evidence in the case. Conducting cases openly and publicly does not require this. Nor is it necessary to enable the public to understand and scrutinise the justice system. The advance notice that a witness statement provides of what evidence its maker, if called as a witness, will give is provided for the benefit of opposing parties (for the reasons I have indicated), not the public. The trial is an event which must (save in exceptional circumstances) be conducted in public so that justice can be seen to be done. But preparations by the parties for the trial for the most part are not, and do not need to be, public.’
Judges:
Leggatt J
Citations:
[2017] EWHC 1553 (Comm), [2017] WLR(D) 424, [2017] 1 WLR 3630, [2017] EMLR 27
Links:
Jurisdiction:
England and Wales
Cited by:
See Also – Blue v Ashley (Judgment) ComC 26-Jul-2017
The parties disputed the existence of an oral agreement by a businessman to pay a sum of millions of pounds in certain circumstances to a business acquaintance with whom he was then drinking in a public house.
Held: The claim failed: ‘no . .
Cited – Kogan v Martin and Others CA 9-Oct-2019
Dispute over the authorship of the screenplay of a film.
Held: ‘the judgment cannot stand. The judge has adopted an erroneous approach to the evidence, failed to make important findings of primary fact, failed to take account of material . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Litigation Practice, Media
Updated: 10 September 2022; Ref: scu.588922