if the court is not satisfied that the right to withhold inspection is established because, for instance, the evidence does not establish a legal right to withhold inspection, then the court will order inspection of the documents.if the court is satisfied that the right to withhold inspection of a document is established by the evidence and there are no sufficient grounds for challenging the correctness of that asserted right, the court will uphold the right.the court should consider the evidence produced in respect of the application. ![]() The court considered that inspection by the court should be a last resort and, where the documents are withheld for reasons of privilege or relevance, agreed that the court should proceed in the following stages: The court cited numerous authorities on the appropriateness of exercising the court’s right to inspect documents withheld from inspection pursuant to CPR 31.19. Further, the results of certain redactions had been to make the disclosed parts of the documents unintelligible. It was asserted that E20’s lawyers had approached the exercise of redaction for relevance too heavy-handedly and with too narrow a view of what material might potentially be relevant to the issues in dispute. West Ham continued to challenge the basis upon which E20’s documents had been redacted for irrelevance. The reason for each of the redactions for relevance was explained and it was suggested that some of the redactions could be removed in the interests of transparency or to enable West Ham to understand the wider redaction process or because they had been made in error. Those documents were reviewed by a senior lawyer for E20 and he set out a schedule setting out his conclusions. It was further agreed that West Ham would identify a sample of 20 documents which had been redacted for irrelevance and that the parties would endeavour to agree a process for determining whether and to what extent those redactions had been properly made. E20’s lawyers were to identify whether any of the redactions could be reduced or removed, and proceeded to make a number of changes to the redactions accordingly. Those steps included re-reviewing 33 documents which contained redactions both for privilege and for other reasons. E20’s lawyers responded detailing the reasons for each redaction and accepting that 95 of the documents could be disclosed fully.Īt the hearing of West Ham’s application, it was agreed that further steps would be taken in an attempt to resolve the issue over redactions. ![]() In July 2018, West Ham issued an application under CPR 31.19(5) seeking further information in respect of 323 of the redacted documents. Of those documents disclosed, 413 were redacted for privilege and 3,720 contained redactions which were stated to be for ‘irrelevance and/or commercial sensitivity’. E20 disclosed 7,501 documents (with further documents being disclosed subsequently as part of E20’s ongoing disclosure obligations). The parties were required to carry out disclosure in January 2018. West Ham alleged that E20 was in breach of the concession agreement and legal proceedings were issued. On 22 March 2013, West Ham United Football Club (West Ham) entered into a 99-year concession agreement under which E20 granted certain concessionary rights to West Ham to use the Stadium during the football season (concession agreement).Ī dispute arose regarding the number of seats that West Ham was entitled to use under the concession agreement. The defendant, E20 Stadium LLP (E20), owns the stadium built for the London Olympics and Paralympics in 2012 (Stadium). In WH Holding Ltd, West Ham United Football Club Ltd -v- E20 Stadium LLP, the High Court considered the circumstances in which it may be appropriate for the court to carry out such a review and emphasised the importance of exercising caution when redacting disclosable documents.
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