Alta Trading UK Ltd (formerly known as Arcadia Petroleum Ltd) & Ors v Peter Miles Bosworth & Ors

Further disclosure will not be ordered merely because alternative search terms identify additional documents or because the disclosure methodology has recognised limitations. The question is whether further disclosure is necessary for the just disposal of the proceedings. In assessing that question, the court may consider the extent of the review already undertaken, the size and character of the document population, the results of manual sampling, and whether a genuinely new source of documentation has emerged. A party’s recent acceptance that an existing disclosure exercise was satisfactory may also weigh against a later application, absent a material change of circumstances.

The claimants sought further disclosure concerning payments possibly made to Sonergy and, more generally, alleged service providers and payments allegedly made for services. The application concerned documents held by the first and second defendants, including approximately 6,000 documents identified as not previously reviewed for relevance and seven payments located through different or additional search terms.

The court considered whether the defendants’ Model D search and review process under the extended disclosure order should be repeated or varied, having regard to criticisms of technology-assisted review and to the claimants’ earlier withdrawal of a similar application.

1. Application dismissed. No further disclosure was ordered.
2. The governing question was whether it was necessary for the just disposal of the proceedings at trial to require the first and second defendants to adopt a different approach to their existing obligation under the extended disclosure order to search for, review and disclose documents relating to issues 48 to 51.
3. The court accepted that concerns could be raised about the accuracy of TAR in identifying documents most likely to be relevant. Those concerns had to be balanced against the facts that approximately one third of the relevant population of about 6,000 documents had been manually reviewed and that the review had disclosed nothing of additional interest to the issues in the case.
4. The identification of hits produced by different or additional search terms in relation to seven payments was not, by itself, a sufficient basis for ordering further disclosure.
5. The claimants’ earlier application before Jacobs J, and its withdrawal, amounted in substance to a recent acceptance that the defendants’ approach to the Model D obligation was satisfactory and that further disclosure on the service-provider issue was unjustified. The later information did not amount to a material change of circumstances.
6. The position might have been different if a genuinely new source of documentation had been identified, or if the additional documents had not been reviewed at all. In the circumstances, the defendants’ existing disclosure appeared to satisfy the original extended disclosure order, and there was no sufficient basis for a specific disclosure order or variation.