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Victory for open justice

31 July 2019
Issue: 7851 / Categories: Legal News , Procedure & practice
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Judges can grant public access to all written materials in the court bundle, the Supreme Court has held.

The case, Cape Intermediate Holdings v Dring [2019] UKSC 38, [2019] All ER (D) 161 (Jul), concerns the principle of ‘open justice’ and has wide-ranging implications for disclosure. Graham Dring, on behalf of the Asbestos Victims Support Groups Forum UK, applied to access documents, which were due to be destroyed, from a legal case against asbestos manufacturer Cape. He believed they contained valuable information about the dangers of asbestos.

Giving the lead judgment, Lady Hale said: ‘The default position should be to grant access to documents placed before a judge and referred to by a party at trial unless there was a good reason not to do so. It should not be limited by what the judge has chosen to read.’

Harminder Bains, partner at law firm Leigh Day, who worked pro bono on the case, said: ‘This is a landmark decision for access to documents to non-parties and a victory for open justice.’

Issue: 7851 / Categories: Legal News , Procedure & practice
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NEWS
Artificial intelligence may be revolutionising the law, but its misuse could wreck cases and careers, warns Clare Arthurs of Penningtons Manches Cooper in this week's NLJ
Bea Rossetto of the National Pro Bono Centre makes the case for ‘General Practice Pro Bono’—using core legal skills to deliver life-changing support, without the need for niche expertise—in this week's NLJ
Small law firms want to embrace technology but feel lost in a maze of jargon, costs and compliance fears, writes Aisling O’Connell of the Solicitors Regulation Authority in this week's NLJ
Charles Pigott of Mills & Reeve reports on Haynes v Thomson, the first judicial application of the Supreme Court’s For Women Scotland ruling in a discrimination claim, in this week's NLJ
The Supreme Court issued a landmark judgment in July that overturned the convictions of Tom Hayes and Carlo Palombo, once poster boys of the Libor and Euribor scandal. In NLJ this week, Neil Swift of Peters & Peters considers what the ruling means for financial law enforcement
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