The Rules of the Supreme Court indicate that save when permitted under the rules, documents on the court file are not intended to be inspected or copied. There is no common law right to obtain access to a document filed in proceedings and held as part of a court record.
The Rules of the Supreme Court, including Order 62 relating to costs, apply to applications under the Act of 1986. Sir Donald Nicholls VC said that: ‘a court file is not a publicly available register. It is a file maintained by the court for the proper conduct of the proceedings. Access to that file is restricted. Non-parties have a right of access to the extent, but only to the extent, provided in the rules.’
Dealing with the transcripts of evidence without the control of the court is ‘knowingly setting at nought one of the court’s procedures devised to strike a balance between the various factors which pull in different directions in all court processes’ and ‘The essential vice lies in knowingly interfering with the court’s documents. This is as much an interference with the administration of justice as knowingly interfering with the court’s officers. The boundary line is to be drawn at the point where there has been a taking of information from documents in the custody of the court knowing that leave was needed and that it had not been obtained. In such cases there is an act of interference with the judicial process; there is also an intention to interfere, because the act was done with knowledge that it was a contravention of the prescribed judicial process.’
Judges:
Sir Donald Nicholls VC
Citations:
[1992] Ch 394
Statutes:
Cited by:
Cited – In re Highfield Commodities Ltd ChD 1985
The court’s discretion in appointing provisional liquidators is unfettered provided it is exercised in a ‘proper judicial manner’. Sir Robert Megarry V-C said: ‘I would respectfully express my complete agreement with the view taken by [the judge]. I . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Litigation Practice, Company
Updated: 06 May 2022; Ref: scu.401968