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26 March 2019 / Sophia Purkis , Victoria Prince
Issue: 7835 / Categories: Features , Procedure & practice
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Collateral use: compulsion is not enough

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The courts can & will exercise their discretion in determining if collateral use is permissible, say Sophia Purkis & Victoria Prince

Disclosure, the use of documents and the interrelationship between proceedings—be they criminal and/or civil, and brought in different or the same jurisdictions—are all topics which are increasingly exercising the courts.

Mr Justice Hildyard’s recent judgment in ACL Netherlands BV (as successor to Autonomy Corporation Ltd) and other companies v Lynch and another [2019] EWHC 249 (Ch) provides an insightful illustration of the principles governing the collateral use of documents and witness statements required to comply with foreign legal obligations.

The claim

Subsidiaries of a US company, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), brought a US$ multi-billion claim in England against two defendants alleged to have fraudulently manipulated the accounting system of a company acquired by the Hewlett-Packard group. The trial of that claim was listed to start in March 2019.

US criminal proceedings arising out of the same circumstances had resulted in a conviction against the second defendant

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