Lykiardopulo v Lykiardopulo

Financial information produced under compulsion in ancillary relief proceedings is generally confidential, but deliberately false information and documents attract no such protection. Where litigants conspire to mislead the court, a judgment may be published without anonymisation in the interests of open justice. Publication is not a punishment and must remain separate from enforcement of the financial order.

Any restriction on publication must rest on adequate evidence. Genuine private or commercially sensitive material may be redacted, but anonymisation cannot extend to altering facts or creating a fictional narrative.

Following a ten-day ancillary relief trial, Baron J found that the husband, his brother and another family member had conspired to manufacture documents and present a perjured case concerning the husband's interest in a family shipping business. She ordered the husband to transfer assets and cash worth about £20 million to the wife.

In a subsequent judgment, Baron J ordered publication of her substantive judgment only after anonymisation. She relied principally on anticipated harm to the family business, the husband's health and a concern that publicity might drive matrimonial litigants towards private dispute resolution.

The wife appealed, seeking publication identifying the parties. The central issue was how a Family Division judge should decide whether to publish an ancillary relief judgment where a party had conspired to present a dishonest case.

1. Appeal allowed. The provisions requiring anonymisation were struck out. The substantive judgment was to be published with redactions protecting genuinely private or commercially sensitive material, provided that the redactions did not reduce or obscure the scale of the litigation misconduct.

2. Thorpe LJ held that ancillary relief proceedings possess distinctive features. They are quasi-inquisitorial, and the parties owe the court an absolute duty of full, frank and clear disclosure. Privacy ordinarily protects children, family financial affairs and information produced under compulsion. The response to fraud on the court nevertheless depends on the context and degree of wrongdoing.

3. Baron J had erred by giving unwarranted weight to assumed damage to the family business. The assertion of commercial harm lacked an adequate evidential foundation and was implausible. Any genuinely sensitive commercial information could be redacted. The evidence of likely injury to the husband's health and the children's wishes was also inadequate.

4. Publication, or its threatened use, must not operate as an aid to enforcement. Statutory and other enforcement remedies are available, and the publication question must be decided separately by reference to the judgment's content, the parties' trial conduct, open justice and any properly evidenced claim to privacy.

5. Thorpe LJ held that the proper choice was between no report and a public judgment. Anonymisation has clear limits. It cannot lawfully become falsification by changing nationalities, locations or other facts. Redaction is the proper means of removing genuinely sensitive details while preserving the essential narrative, findings and conclusions.

6. Stanley Burnton LJ agreed. Although compelled financial disclosure generally remains confidential, litigants who provide false information and documents have no entitlement to confidentiality in that material. Publication without anonymisation is permissible, not as a sanction or punishment, but because the dishonest conduct attracts no right of confidentiality.

7. Tomlinson LJ also agreed. The question of publication should have been determined from the judgment's content and the conduct at trial. The supposed threat to the international shipping business was fanciful, and redaction was sufficient for any genuinely sensitive material.

1. Court of Appeal (Civil Division): The court unanimously allowed the wife's appeal in Lykiardopulo v Lykiardopulo [2010] EWCA Civ 1315, struck out the provisions for anonymisation and directed publication subject to appropriate redaction.
2. High Court, Family Division: After the ancillary relief trial, Baron J ordered the husband to transfer assets and cash worth about £20 million. In a subsequent judgment she directed that the substantive judgment should be published only after anonymisation. No citation for either judgment is stated.