The State of Qatar v Banque Havilland SA & Ors

Requests for further information and Norwich Pharmacal relief are governed by necessity. The court will not order requests which seek evidence, test a party’s case, broaden an insufficient pleading, or amount to a fishing expedition. A party must plead a sufficiently clear and factually based positive case before extensive information or disclosure can be required.

Under the disclosure pilot, Model E disclosure is exceptional. It requires a focused application identifying the relevant document category, the specific issues, the proposed train of inquiry and the likely scope of the search. Serious allegations alone do not justify Model E. Model D remains the usual approach where the proposed search cannot yet be defined with sufficient clarity.

The claimant sought further information under Part 18 and Norwich Pharmacal principles, early disclosure, and particular disclosure models in proceedings concerning an alleged conspiracy and the production and use of a presentation.

The defendants resisted many requests as evidential, overbroad, insufficiently pleaded or unnecessary. The court considered which matters required clarification in the pleadings, whether early disclosure was justified, and whether Model D or the exceptional Model E approach should apply to particular disclosure issues.

1. Further information. The governing hallmark of both Part 18 requests and Norwich Pharmacal requests was necessity. The court would order further information only where it was strictly necessary to understand the opposing case. Requests seeking evidence, testing the defence, or expanding the scope of inquiry beyond the pleaded case were refused. Requests concerning the defendants’ purpose, associated persons, and insufficiently defined relationships were therefore not ordered.
2. The defendants were required to provide limited further information concerning the purpose, circumstances and intended benefit of the presentation, the meaning of “control”, and the roles of persons said to have participated in the alleged conspiracy. A bare denial that the defendants took active steps would not answer a positive case that participation could include originating the idea while others executed it.
3. Early disclosure. Early disclosure was refused. Initial disclosure was confined to key documents relied on or necessary to understand the case, rather than an evidential base designed to test the evidence. The fact that documents had been gathered did not make them necessary at that stage. The date for disclosure was fixed as January 2017.
4. Disclosure models. Model E was exceptional and, under the disclosure pilot, was expected to be ordered less frequently and in more demanding circumstances than under the earlier approach in Berezovsky. An application had to identify a category or class of documents, link it to specific issues, explain the proposed train of inquiry, and enable the court to define the likely scope of the search. The claimant’s proposed Model E disclosure was generally refused, with Model D ordered instead. Model E could be reconsidered if later information made the search sufficiently definable.
5. Specific disclosure directions were made on some business-activity and trading issues. Other proposed issues were refused because they were too broad, insufficiently pleaded, not key issues, or concerned matters likely to be addressed through other disclosure or witness evidence.