HT-2022-000132 - [2025] EWHC 1058 (TCC)

This group of documents comprises 30 versions of the 4NLC Risk Management presentation for an Audit and Risk Committee on 14 September 2023. The document is not itself a legal document. The document includes a slide headed Programme Risk Update which refers to possible [REDACTED]. Mr Hossain submitted that in 4 of the versions of this document, these passages had not been redacted. HL explain that a change in formatting caused an error in redaction. No review identified an obvious error.

On the one hand, the content of the document is uninformative. Although relevant to disclosure issues D33 and D34, it offers no more than a high level statement that changes might carry risk and be subject to legal challenge and that is a view that might be expressed by the author of the document, not being a lawyer. On the other hand, the slide, even expressed in that brief way, is conveying legal advice which has been received by the GC. It seems to me that where multiple versions of the same document have been disclosed, that should be sufficient to cause the reviewer to consider other versions. If they did so, that would make it obvious, if it was not already, that the document had been disclosed in error without the relevant redaction.

The authorities are of limited assistance on the approach that the court should take where there are multiple reviewers and what knowledge of the disclosure universe as a whole should be attributed to the reasonable solicitor reviewing the documents. The claimants’ submissions, which highlight the number of documents being reviewed by multiple reviewers, to an extent address the issue of obvious mistake as if the reviewer operates in isolation. If the reviewer has concluded that there is no error in the disclosure of the particular document, that is a pointer to the fact that any error was not obvious. But where there is at the least a question mark and it is known that there are multiple versions of the same document, I take the view that some check should be made. In this case, that would have revealed an obvious error. I have a discretion to exercise and, in these circumstances, I consider it fair to exercise it so as not to give permission to rely on this document.