CAYMAN MUSIC LIMITED v BLUE MOUNTAIN MUSIC LIMITED & ORS

An allegation that documents are forgeries is adequately pleaded where the case is that they were created after their apparent dates and supporting circumstances are identified. The pleading need not identify the person responsible where that cannot reasonably be known before trial.

On a transfer from IPEC, the overriding consideration is justice. Access to justice for a party of limited means is a powerful consideration, but it cannot retain proceedings which cannot fairly be tried within IPEC’s streamlined procedure. Complexity, likely trial length, value and the nature of the issues must be assessed realistically. Allegations of fraud do not automatically require transfer, but a factually extensive dispute turning on credibility and alleged forgery may be unsuitable for IPEC.

The claimant music publisher sought a declaration that it owned copyright in 83 Bob Marley compositions through a chain of alleged assignments. The defendants denied that title and pleaded that four assignments in the chain were forgeries. They also advanced an alternative chain of title to 77 compositions.

The claimant applied to strike out the forgery allegations on the grounds that the alleged falsification and the responsible individuals had not been sufficiently identified. The defendants applied to transfer the claim and counterclaim from IPEC to the general Chancery list. The central issues were whether the forgery case was adequately pleaded and whether the factual dispute could fairly be determined under IPEC’s streamlined procedure.

1. The claimant’s strike-out application was dismissed. The defendants’ case was clear: the relevant documents had been created after the dates which they purported to bear, so the assignments recorded by them were false. The particulars also identified circumstances said to support that inference, including the late emergence of documents, the absence of originals and metadata, and apparent inconsistencies in the 1975 assignment. That was a sufficiently arguable case for trial.

2. The inability to identify the individual forger did not make the allegation liable to be struck out. Applying the approach in Sofer v Swiss Independent Trustees SA [2020] EWCA Civ 699, particulars should be supplied as soon as feasible, but an allegation does not automatically fail merely because the persons responsible cannot yet be identified. The defendants had, in any event, identified likely individuals or groups involved.

3. The defendants’ transfer application was granted. The court applied the IPEC transfer principles. A case capable of fair determination within two or, at most, three days will ordinarily have a level of complexity suitable for IPEC. If it cannot be tried fairly within that framework, access to justice cannot keep it there, although it remains a very powerful consideration where the case is otherwise suitable.

4. Here the competing chains of title, alleged forgeries, composition-specific factual disputes, proposed witnesses and possible expert evidence meant that the case could not fairly be tried in two or three days. Sampling compositions, staying the counterclaim, or considering only the 1975 assignment would not resolve that difficulty. Fraud allegations are not inherently unsuitable for IPEC, but this dispute was largely about forgery and credibility rather than ordinary copyright-law issues. The claim and counterclaim were therefore transferred to the general Chancery list.

not stated in the judgment.