Practice Note No. 14 issued on
12 February 1999 is revoked and the following Practice
Note No. 14 is substituted.
1. Practitioners should expect
that, with a view to eliminating or reducing the burden
of discovery, the Court:
a. will not order general discovery
as a matter of course, even where a consent direction
to that effect is submitted; b. will mould any order for
discovery to suit the facts of a particular case; and
c. will expect the following
questions to be answered:
i. is discovery necessary
at all, and if so for what purposes? ii. can those purposes be
achieved:
by
a means less expensive than discovery?
by
discovery only in relation to particular issues?
by
discovery (at least in the first instance - see
(iii)) only of defined categories of documents?
iii. particularly in cases
where there are many documents, should discovery be
given in stages, eg initially on a limited basis,
with liberty to apply later for particular discovery
or discovery on a broader basis? iv. should discovery be given
in the list of documents by general description rather
than by identification of individual documents?
2. In determining whether to
order discovery, the Court will have regard to the issues
in the case and the order in which they are likely to
be resolved, the resources and circumstances of the parties,
the likely cost of the discovery and its likely benefit.
3. To prevent orders for discovery
requiring production of more documents than are necessary
for the fair conduct of the case, orders for discovery
will ordinarily be limited to the documents required to
be disclosed by Order 15, rule 2(3).
