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Filed on behalf of the: Defendant
Witness: Andrew Paul Parsons
Statement No: Fourth
Exhibits: AP 4
Date Made: 9 October 2017
Claim No: HQ16X01238 and HQ17X02637
THE POST OFFICE GROUP LITIGATION
IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION
BETWEEN:
ALAN BATES & OTHERS
Claimants
POST OFFICE LIMITED
Defendant
FOURTH WITNESS STATEMENT OF ANDREW PAUL PARSONS.
I, ANDREW PAUL PARSONS of Bond Dickinson LLP, Oceana House, 39 - 49
Commercial Road, Southampton SO15 1GA WILL SAY as follows:
1. I am a Partner at Bond Dickinson LLP, solicitors for the Defendant, Post Office
Limited (Post Office). I make this statement in advance of the first Case
Management Conference in this matter (CMC). This statement is being filed
alongside the Defendant's Skeleton Argument, which was required to be lodged on
9 October 2017. It addresses factual matters that are relied on in the Skeleton
Argument.
2. Facts in this statement about the operations of Post Office are taken from my own
knowledge and/or from conversations and instructions from Post Office personnel.
Information about Horizon has generally been provided by Fujitsu, sometimes
indirectly through Post Office personnel. Other facts in this statement are within
my own knowledge unless otherwise stated. This statement is accompanied by an
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exhibit marked Exhibit AP 4 and, except where the context indicates otherwise,
page references in this statement are to the pages of this exhibit.
3, I provided a relatively brief description of the background to this dispute and of
Post Office in sections 1 and 2 of my second witness statement in this matter,
which was dated 22 December 2016 (Parsons 2) and can be found at J,17 of the
CMC bundle. The court may find it helpful to read paragraphs 18-20, 23-27 and
37-57 of Parsons 2.
Summary
4. The principal purpose of this statement is to explain the issues that have arisen
between the Claimants and Post Office regarding orders for early disclosure. In
particular, I set out the facts that I believe are relevant to any decision to order
such disclosure and I explain why the disclosure orders sought by the Claimants
would require huge and disproportionate effort and cost and would also be likely to
produce vast numbers of irrelevant documents.
5. Perhaps unusually for group litigation, the claims made by the Claimants in these
proceedings (and, in particular, the acts and omissions by Post Office on which
these claims are based) are likely to be factually very different from one another.
The diverse nature of these claims and the need for a clear understanding of the
facts on which they are based is explained in paragraphs 11, 99-116 and 173 of
Parsons 2. Post Office agreed to a GLO in order to address common issues,
principally as to the legal duties (including the construction of its contracts). It did
not agree to a GLO so that individual Claimants might avoid having to provide a
proper account of the claims they make (and, in particular, the breaches they
allege and the losses that they claim to have suffered).
6. At the hearing before Senior Master Fontaine on 26 January 2017 (the GLO
Hearing), Post Office was concerned that this might happen. In its view, its
concerns have been borne out by events. Nine months further into these
proceedings, Post Office still does not have a clear understanding of the claims
that it faces. The minimal details so far provided by the Claimants (in their Generic
Particulars of Claim (GPOC) and their Schedules of Information (SOls)) omit vital
information. This makes it difficult, if not impossible, for Post Office to give the vast
disclosure now sought by the Claimants and makes it impossible to assess to what
extent that disclosure would assist in the fair and efficient resolution of the claims
actually being made in these proceedings.
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Post Office's approach to disclosure is more targeted than the Claimants’. It
proposes directions providing for early disclosure of key documents so that the
important common issues can be addressed in a proportionate and timely manner.
Post Office does not want these proceedings hanging over its business any longer
than necessary, not least because they have an obvious impact on its relationships
with current postmasters. Further, although it is a large company, it has finite
resources, and continues to receive government support so as to provide critical
services to local communities. Unlike the Claimants, it does not have the benefit of
the ample litigation funding described in paragraphs 11.7 and 128 of Parsons 2.
The Claimants would no doubt disagree, but from Post Office’s perspective, they
have dragged out the litigation process. Post Office is concerned that their
strategy is to keep this litigation alive for as long as possible without exposing the
facts of their claims to scrutiny, forcing Post Office to incur very high legal costs. In
this context, it is relevant to note that Post Office considers that many of the claims
it faces are hopeless, for the reasons summarised in paragraphs 11.6 and 91 of
Parsons 2.
The structure of this statement is as follows:
9.1 In Section 1 (paragraphs iia I outline what I believe to be the material
events that have occurred since the GLO Hearing.
9.2 In Section 2 (paragraphs 6G (47), I address facts which are relevant to the
Claimants’ proposed directions.
9.3 In Section 3 (paragraphs [raaT5q
Post Office's proposed directions.
, Iaddress facts which are relevant to
9.4 In Section 4 (paragraphs 169), I give some basic information regarding
the claims advanced in these proceedings, the claims that appear to be
time-barred and the claims that appear to have been settled.
SECTION 1: EVENTS SINCE THE GLO HEARING
Since January 2017, my firm has exchanged extensive correspondence with the
Claimants’ Solicitors, Freeths, on a number of matters relevant to these
proceedings. I summarise the principal correspondence below.
Pleadings
As required by paragraph 30 of the GLO, the Claimants served their GPOC on 23
March 2017. The GPOC was very different from the draft GPOC that had been
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12.
13.
14.
15.
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circulated before the GLO Hearing two months earlier. Indeed, it was 33 pages
longer than the original draft. Nevertheless, it did not include several of the causes
of action asserted in the Claim Form, including claims for conspiracy (which the
Claimants had confirmed during the GLO hearing that it was not pursuing — see
page10), misfeasance in public office (which the Claimants had confirmed in
correspondence it was not pursuing — see page 43 of the Claimants’ Letter of
Response at tab 13 of the CMC bundle), and breaches of the European
Convention on Human Rights (which the Claimants had said nothing about)
However, none of these causes of action has been removed from the Claim Form
(or the second Claim Form subsequently issued on 24 July 2017).
Post Office requested Further Information in respect of the GPOC on 27 April 2017
(see tab 6 of the Case Management Bundle). This RFI was narrow in nature,
being limited to 12 requests. The response provided by the Claimants was minimal
and refused to address many of the requests, relying in large part on an argument
that the questions related not to generic issues but to the facts of individual claims,
such that the request was premature.
On 6 July 2017, four months after service of the GPOC, Freeths produced a
proposed Amended GPOC (see tab 3 of the Case Management Bundle). Freeths
explained that this ‘simply plead[s] a term implied by the Supply of Goods are
Services Act and make[s] clear that error and detection and repellency in the
Horizon system is an issue’ (page1). The amendments changed the nature of the
Claimants’ case in relation to Horizon significantly. They were now alleging that
Horizon was provided by Post Office as a service to postmasters, that it had to be
fit for purpose from a user's perspective and that it was not so fit, including (but
apparently not only) because it was not sufficiently “error repellent”. None of these
points were particularised.
The proposed Amended GPOC was served just 8 working days before Post
Office's Generic Defence was due (and 15 months after the Letter of Claim). It was
not explained why it had been left to the last minute. Nevertheless, Post Office
was anxious that preparations for the CMC should not be adversely affected.
Accordingly, it consented to the amendments on 11 July 2017 (page 10) and it
served its Generic Defence as the GLO required on 18 July 2017, without seeking
any extension of time.
Freeths requested Further Information in respect of the Generic Defence on 31
July 2017 (see tab 7 of the Case Management Bundle). In contrast to Post Office's
short RFI, the Claimants’ requests sought to question nearly all aspects of Post
Office's case. 98 requests were made, spread over 61 topics. Post Office’s
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16.
17.
18.
19.
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response was requested by 4 September 2017, which meant that the bulk of the
work was to be done over the summer vacation.
My firm wrote to Freeths on 4 September 2017 to explain that Post Office’s
response would not be ready until the week commencing 11 September 2017
(page 18). In the event, the response was provided on 13 September 2017, 9 days
after the date requested and 7 days before the Claimants’ Reply was due.
On 13 September 2017, Freeths indicated that it would require an extension of
time for the Generic Reply from 20 September 2017 to 2 October 2017 (the
extension sought was subsequently shortened to 29 September 2017) (page 19).
On 13 September 2017 and 18 September 2017 (pages 21-22), my firm asked
Freeths to identify the reasons why an extension was required, specifically asking
them to identify any part of Post Office's RFI response that was causing difficulty.
Freeths did not provide this information. As explained in my firm's letters of 1
September 2017 and 20 September 2017 (pages 12 and 35), Post Office required
sight of the Generic Reply before it felt able to propose its own directions, and the
requested extension would only allow 6 working days in which to agree directions
before skeleton arguments were due to be filed. On 18 September 2017 and 20
September 2017 (pages 22 and 35), Post Office offered to agree to an extension to
25 September 2017 to give the parties two weeks to discuss directions.
These offers were not acceptable to Freeths. On 20 September 2017, it applied for
an extension of time, which was granted (with costs reserved to the CMC). The
Generic Reply was served on 29 September 2017. This delay has affected Post
Office's ability to prepare for the CMC.
Having reviewed the Generic Reply, Post Office still does not understand why its
RFI response required the requested, or indeed any, extension. For the reasons
explained in my firm's letter of 4 October 2017 (page 38), I believe the Generic
Reply has been used more as a vehicle for articulating arguments, rather than as a
means of addressing the factual claims made in the Generic Defence, and has not
therefore helped in clarifying or narrowing the issues in dispute.
For completeness, I should mention that Freeths has objected to Post Office’s RFI
response, suggesting that Post Office should have adopted a very different (and in
fact quite impossible) approach to the generic statements of case. However, on 19
September 2017, Freeths indicated that, if the Claimants sought an order for
further responses, it would write to my firm identifying the relevant responses in
respect of which it would seek an order (page 34). It has not done so, which
makes it unnecessary for Post Office to adduce the evidence on which it would
otherwise wish to rely.
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Group Register and the new Claimants
21
22.
23.
On 26 April 2017 and 25 May 2017, my firm wrote to Freeths asking them to
provide an update on the new Claimants who were going to join the proceedings
and an indication of who the likely new Claimants might be (pages 77 and 78).
Post Office wished to begin investigating the positions of any new Claimants from
its records. Freeths did not respond to this request but, in the meantime,
information was shared with the media about there now being over 1,000
Claimants in these proceedings (see, for example, the Computer Weekly article of
28 March 2017 reporting that '1,000 sub-postmasters apply to join IT-related
group litigation against Post Office’ at page 80).
On 24 July 2017, just before the Group Register was closed to new Claimants,
Freeths served a second Claim Form which included an additional 324 Claimants.
This was the first indication Post Office had of who the new Claimants were.
There are now 510 Claimants, namely 522 Claimants who have issued Claim
Forms, less 12 who have discontinued their claims.
Schedules of Information (SOls)
24,
25,
Pursuant to paragraph 26 and Schedule 3 of the GLO, the Claimants are required
to serve SOls giving basic information about their claims. Amongst other things,
each Claimant is required to give brief details about any training said to have been
inadequate, of any helpline advice said to have been inadequate, of any
investigations of which they complain, of any pressure exerted on them to resign,
and of any steps taken to impede the sale of their businesses. Each Claimant is
also required to say how they treated apparent shortfalls in the accounts they
submitted to Post Office (i.e. whether they falsely accounted for such shortfalls)
and why, and to state the amounts or give brief details of their various heads of
claim. Post Office argued for these requirements at the GLO Hearing because it
believed that the parties and the Court would at least need these details before
they could sensibly be expected to make important decisions about how best to
manage the claims made in these proceedings and bring them to a resolution. It
hoped, for example, that the details might enable the Claimants (of whom there are
now 510) to be broken down into classes or groups from whom Lead Claimants
could be selected whose claims were representative of the broad range of claims
made.
Freeths served SOls for the first 198 Claimants on 20 June 2017 (with the
exception of Claimants 86 and 122, for whom extensions to 2 October 2017 were
agreed). On reviewing these SOls it became apparent that there were serious
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26.
27.
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problems with them. Post Office wrote to explain the problems and express its
concerns about them on 1 September 2017 (pages 83-92). Given its importance to
some of the issues to be considered at the present hearing, this letter should be
read in full. Amongst other things, it pointed out that:
25.1 The answers given in the SOls are often inconsistent with other answers
given in the same SOI, or are inconsistent with the Amended GPOC.
25.2 Imprecise / evasive language is used, making it time-consuming, difficult and
in some cases impossible to make sense of what is / is not being claimed.
25.3. In many cases, no details are given at all and, insofar as details are
provided, they are provided with such brevity that they are of little or no help
in understanding crucial features of the claims asserted and, in particular,
the breaches alleged and the losses claimed.
25.4 In many cases, critical issues have been inadequately addressed or omitted
altogether, such as false accounting by postmasters. This was surprising
given the attention that the Amended GPOC gives to that issue.
25.5 It was intended that the SOls would provide Post Office with a fair indication
of the value of most of the Claimants’ claims and therefore a fair idea of the
total value of their claims. However, many claims have not been valued at
all, some claims have been valued in ways that seem duplicative or
obviously inflated and others have been valued in ways that are inconsistent
with the Claimants’ Amended GPOC.
Some examples of SOls served by Freeths are at pages 93-132. Consistently with
the Solicitor's Code of Conduct, Indicative Behaviour 11.8, Post Office and its legal
team had anticipated that the SOls, which were required to be confirmed by
Statements of Truth, would be the subject of meaningful scrutiny by the solicitors
on the record so as to ensure that claims were not advanced without any proper
basis. However, these problems appeared to demonstrate that the SOls had been
prepared with minimal input from Freeths.
In its letter of 1 September 2017, my firm asked Freeths to correct the first tranche
of SOls and ensure that the next tranche of SOls avoided these problems. We
also invited Freeths to provide its proposals as to how and by when this could be
done, as we were mindful that this exercise would require some time (page 91).
The remaining SOls were served on 4 September 2017 (save for a handful where
Post Office has agreed extensions of time). These suffer the same problems as
the original tranche of SOls (see the further examples at pages 133-152).
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Freeths wrote to my firm on 20 September 2017 refusing to make any changes to
any SOls on the basis that it would be disproportionate to provide more complete
or accurate information at this stage in the litigation process (page 153). I note
Freeths did not deny that the SOls were prepared largely without its input. This
seems extraordinary to me, given that those claims that have been quantified in the
SOls, although prone to a significant margin of error and suffering from the
problems discussed in paragraph PS] above, add up to around £120 million, or
approximately £240,000 per Claimant.
Second Sight
30.
31.
32.
There has been discussion between the parties regarding allowing the Claimants
to speak to the forensic accountants (Second Sight) who were involved in the
inquiry and subsequent Post Office Complaint Review and Mediation Scheme
described in paragraph 25 of Parsons 2 (the Scheme).
On 13 October 2016, Post Office had proposed a protocol under which the
Claimants could freely speak to Second Sight, save in relation to three protected
topics where there was a higher risk of privileged information being mentioned
(page 158). On 24 February 2017, Freeths objected to this proposal (page 166)
Rather than accepting the protocol as a temporary measure that would have
allowed them immediate access, they refused to agree anything and pressed for
unfettered access.
However, on 15 June 2017, Freeths wrote to my firm seeking to accept the
protocol with a small number of very minor tweaks (page 168). I do not know why
it changed its position or why it took 8 months to engage with Post Office's
proposal. The protocol was signed on 1 September 2017 (page 169).
Known Error Log
33.
34.
There has also been discussion between the parties regarding a Fujitsu database
known as “the Known Error Log”. As Post Office explained at paragraph 50(4) of
its Generic Defence, the Known Error Log is 'used by Fujitsu [to explain] how to
deal with, or work around minor issues that can sometimes arise in Horizon for
which (often because of their triviality) system-wide fixes have not been developed
and implemented...it is not a record of software coding errors or bugs...fand]...to
the best of Post Office's knowledge and belief, there is no issue in the Known Error
Log that could affect the accuracy of a branch's accounts or that secure
transmission and storage of transaction data’.
On 6 July 2017, whilst writing to seek Post Office’s consent to the proposed
Amended GPOC, Freeths requested that Post Office urgently disclose the Known
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35
36.
37.
38.
39.
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Claim No: HQ16X01238 and HQ17X02637
Error Log because it is ‘plainly of central relevance to the case and, in particular,
the issues which depend on upon the presence or absence of bugs, errors or
defects in the Horizon system! (page 1).
Despite Post Office explaining the irrelevance of the Known Error Log and that it
was not within Post Office’s control (pages 13 and 180), Freeths continued to
demand disclosure of the Known Error Log (page 177).
On 1 September 2017, Post Office explained that, according to its information from
Fujitsu, the Known Error Log is ‘a proprietary database with approximately 4,000
entries [and is] a constantly rolling document, the current version in use has
evolved over time and may not reflect the version in place at [a] time which is
relevant to the Claimants’ claims’ (page 13).
Due to the large amount of information involved and the fact that the Known Error
Log is not in Post Office's control, Post Office stated that 'whether and, if so, how
your client should have access to the Known Error Log therefore needs to be
considered in the context of any wider directions that are made' (page 135). Post
Office did not refuse access to the Known Error Log (for which purpose it needed
Fujitsu's consent), but it was concerned about the timing and logistics of arranging
access with Fujitsu.
I understand from Fujitsu that the Known Error Log cannot be easily downloaded
as it comprises data that is stored on a database, rather than being a document in
a conventional form. Unless one has the necessary database software, reading
the data in the Known Error Log is very difficult. The alternative is to manually
copy or print each entry, but this would produce poorly formatted material and
would take significant time and work. Fujitsu believe that the best solution is for a
person with appropriate expertise to read the Known Error Log on a screen at its
offices where the information can be presented in a user-friendly format.
To avoid incurring needless time and costs arguing about this, Post Office wrote to
Freeths on 22 September 2017 offering to arrange in the first instance for an
opportunity for the Claimants’ IT expert to inspect the Known Error Log at Fujitsu's
premises (page 180). This offer was subject to Fujitsu's requirement that the
Claimants’ IT expert signs a standard form Non-Disclosure Agreement in order to
protect Fujitsu's commercially sensitive know-how that might be revealed in the
Known Error Log.
However, if having seen the Known Error Log the expert believes that disclosure of
some sort is needed, the inspection process offered by Post Office should enable
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Freeths to indicate precisely what is needed and to explain why, as my firm
proposed in its letter dated 29 September 2017 (page 181).
My firm has provided Freeths with the Non-Disclosure Agreement and the parties
are currently arranging a mutually convenient date for Fujitsu and the Claimants’
expert to meet (see page 182).
Directions
42.
43.
44,
45.
On 6 July 2017, Freeths provided a draft Directions Order for consideration: its
proposed order (the Freeths Order) is at page 5 and its covering letter at page 1.
This was sent (i) the same day as Freeths proposed the Amended GPOC; (ii) while
Post Office and its legal team was hard at work on the Generic Defence; (iii) before
all the SOls had been served; and (iv) before the Group Register had closed, so at
this stage Post Office was only aware that there were 198 Claimants. I thought it
odd that Freeths felt able to propose directions before it had even seen Post
Office's Generic Defence and did not understand how it expected Post Office to be
in a position to respond. Indeed, I did not (and do not) understand how the parties
could sensibly be expected to decide important matters of this kind until after the
statements of case had closed. I believe that the CMC was fixed with this point in
mind.
As I explain in paragraph 29, 32 and 33 of Parsons 2, Post Office has previously
felt that it is being frogmarched into agreeing important matters before it is in a
position to do so. A practice almost appears to have developed in which Freeths
makes significant proposals on matters that are not yet ripe for decision and then
criticises Post Office for wishing to take a considered and properly contextualised
approach to such matters.
During July and August my firm was busy preparing Post Office's Generic Defence
and response to the Claimants' RFI. We were also reviewing the first 198 SOls
and checking the details of the 324 Claimants added to the Group Register.
By letter dated 1 September 2017, my firm explained that Post Office would not be
in a position to comprehensively deal with directions until it had seen the
Claimant's Generic Reply, due on 20 September 2017 (page 12)). We did however
raise a number of issues that could be dealt with without first needing sight of the
Generic Reply. These included dealing with certain heads of claim that had not
been pleaded in the Amended GPOC, the discontinuance of claims by a number of
Claimants and the possible strike out of certain categories of Claimants whose
claims appeared to be unsustainable. Some of these points are addressed in
Section 3 below (starting at paragraph 4d). As explained further in my firm's letter
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of 20 September 2017 (page 35), the following matters could not be dealt with
constructively until Post Office had sight of the Reply:
45.1
45.2
45.3
45.4
Preliminary issues: Regarding the contracts between Post Office and its
postmasters, there are profound issues between Post Office and the
Claimants. For example, the Claimants contend that most of the relevant
express terms of the contracts do not reflect the “true agreement” between
the parties or are unenforceable. Moreover, while Post Office alleges that
two implied terms are necessary to give the contracts business efficacy, the
Claimants are arguing more than 20 implied terms. The parties also take
different views on the agency duties between the parties and on how the
express terms should be construed. Sight of the Reply was required to
understand whether and to what extent any of these matters were agreed or
disputed and whether the outstanding issues could be considered as
potential preliminary issues.
Factual disputes: The Generic Defences set out what Post Office contends
to be the relevant factual background to the legal and factual relationships
between the parties. I had expected the Reply to accept or dispute this on a
point-by-point basis, which would reveal whether the parties would be able
to reach an agreed statement of facts that, amongst other things, might form
the factual basis for the determination of preliminary issues.
Lead cases, disclosure and expert evidence: Until the scope of potential
preliminary issues and factual matrix was known, it would not be possible to
make informed decisions as to the immediate case management decisions
to be made (especially bearing in the mind the great difficulty in this regard
that results from the inadequacy of the SOls).
Limitation and concealment: These matters were not addressed in the
Amended GPOC nor covered in the SOls but they were raised in the
Generic Defence. Until Post Office saw what the Claimants said about them
in the Generic Reply, it could not know whether and how these matters
might need to be taken into account in discussing directions.
As explained above, the Generic Reply was only served on 29 September 2017. It
has had a direct impact on the preliminary issues that Post Office has suggested
for consideration and on the further information Post Office is seeking
In the evening of 4 October 2017, my firm wrote to Freeths suggesting its own
Directions Order: the suggested order (the Bond Dickinson Order) is at page 51
and my firm's explanatory letter is at page 38 onwards.
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48.
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In the last few days, Freeths has accused my firm of having ambushed them with
the Bond Dickinson Order, apparently with a view to prejudicing orderly preparation
for the CMC. I reject these accusations absolutely and I hope they are not
repeated.
In Section 2 below (paragraphs PoHfaap. I address the directions proposed in the
Freeths Order, with particular reference to the proposed orders for disclosure. I
discuss the directions proposed in the Bond Dickinson Order, and compare them to
the directions proposed by Freeths, in section 3 (paragraphs [*?
SECTION 2: CLAIMANTS' PROPOSED DIRECTIONS
Background
50.
51.
52.
53.
In its letter of 6 July 2017 (page 1), Freeths proposed that:
50.1 Lead Cases be selected, without setting out what is to be done with those
Lead Cases;
50.2 Post Office be required to provide a huge amount of disclosure on the basis
that such disclosure is “staged” and “generic”;
50.3 permission is given for expert evidence in relation to Horizon without setting
out what issues and questions that expert would address; and
50.4 all other questions be deferred to a future CMC.
Freeths also tentatively suggested that the question of whether the postmaster
contract is a "relational" contract be considered as a preliminary issue although this
was not included in their draft Order (page 4).
The Claimants’ directions require a great deal of work to be done by Post Office for
little obvious or immediate purpose or benefit. How they might help resolve this
litigation is not explained, either in the draft Order or in any related
correspondence. Post Office believes that the extremely wide disclosure they seek
is disproportionate, will not help progress the key points in dispute and / or is
impossible to comply with. It is concerned that the Claimants are seeking to force
Post Office into providing a vast number of documents and information, which may
or may not be relevant, but which they can wade through in the hope that
something might turn up to support their speculative claims.
I deal with Lead Claimants, preliminary issues and experts when discussing Post
Office's proposed directions in Section 3 below (starting at paragraph ['42). Post
Office takes particular issue with the Claimants’ orders for disclosure and I address
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these immediately below. To place Post Office's objections in context, in
paragraphs 64 below I provide a detailed explanation of how Post Office holds
information and in paragraphs I explain the difficulties that would be caused
by the unilateral “generic” disclosure provided for in paragraph 3 of the Freeths
Order. In paragraphs I then explain why I believe the mutual “standard”
disclosure provided for in paragraph 2b of the Freeths Order would be unworkable.
Information held by Post Office
54
55.
56.
Post Office is a large corporate entity. As at 1 October 2017, it had around 5,000
employees working from around 320 different offices and locations, with around
500 employees either working from home or in the field, with no fixed office base.
Like other large corporates, Post Office will have potentially relevant documents
spread amongst a significant number of different people, teams and locations.
Most of Post Office's employees will have either had contact with postmasters, and
therefore hold relevant documents, or will have been involved with support and
planning of operations that affect postmasters. This litigation, and the Claimants’
wide disclosure requests, have the potential to touch on nearly all areas of its
business.
It should also be borne in mind that Post Office's organisational structures and its
staff have changed significantly since Horizon was fully rolled out in 2000. This
includes a major restructuring in 2012, when Royal Mail was privatised and Post
Office was retained by the Secretary of State for Business Innovation and Skills.
Until then, Post Office had been a subsidiary of Royal Mail and the Royal Mail
group had been run with a number of integrated teams and functions covering both
businesses. Any disclosure order will therefore require a review of innumerable
archived documents, backed-up data and legacy IT systems.
Post Office's IT systems
57.
58.
The majority of relevant documents will be held electronically. However, this does
not mean that it would be easy to identify and recover them. In order to give a
sense of the difficulties involved, in the following paragraphs I describe some of the
principal IT systems that Post Office has in place and which might be relevant in
this litigation.
Post Office's internal IT team estimates that it has in excess of 100 individual
systems that may hold relevant documents. However, it outsources the majority of
its IT systems, including IT support for those systems. Any extraction of
documents from these outsourced IT systems will probably require Post Office to
incur charges from these IT providers.
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Horizon
59
60.
Horizon is the IT system through which business is transacted in branches. In
simple terms, it is provided to Post Office by Fujitsu. The key information tracked
by Horizon is transaction data and event data. Transaction data is the line-by-line
record of each transaction that has been input into Horizon. Event data shows
other actions undertaken by a Horizon user on a terminal, such as their time of log-
on and reports they have printed.
To retrieve all transaction and event data for all of the Claimants will be a
considerable undertaking because it is a labour-intensive process. As a rough
guide, Fujitsu tells me that with its current resource it would take over a year to
extract one month of data for each of the Claimants' branches, in part, due to the
checks that are conducted on the data's integrity when it is extracted. If Fujitsu
dedicates two additional full time employees to the extraction of data (at a cost of
at least £500 each per day to Post Office) in 4 months it can provide data for 1
month for all of the Claimants’ branches. However, some of the Claimants have
been in post for more than 17 years. Even with the additional resource, it would
take decades to provide all of the transaction and event data for all Claimants.
POL SAP and Core Finance
61.
62.
63.
64.
Post Office's Finance Service Centre (FSC) runs Post Office's back-end accounting
for its business, branches and clients. There are nearly 150 different financial
functions within the FSC. Operating practices across the FSC differ widely, with
some teams being primarily paper-based, some using the POL SAP and Core
Finance IT systems (see paragraphs fato 53} below) and others principally working
from emails and SharePoint (see paragraph
jelow).
POL SAP is currently the main software used by the FSC to record financial
information across the Post Office network. There are approximately 24.2
terabytes of data in POL SAP and its archive.
POL SAP is a database provided under licence from SAP, a global IT company. It
is not possible to simply extract all information from it for each of the Claimants as
this would produce information in database format which would be meaningless
without the necessary SAP licence. There are plans to move from POL SAP to a
new but similar IT system called Core Finance in 2018, but a similar issue with
extracting data will still exist.
An example of a report that can be run from POL SAP and Core Finance is the
Customer Account. The Customer Account shows the dates of how shortfalls
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accrued and any payments or deductions from remuneration that were taken to
reduce the shortfall. This document is discussed further at paragraph /149.9 below.
HR SAP
65.
HR SAP is a similar database platform to POL SAP but holds records on Post
Office employees (i.e. those that work in its Crown branches). It should be noted
that HR SAP does not provide a full picture of Crown employees since other
records, such as on performance, will be held locally at a branch. HR SAP also
holds some information on Post Office's postmasters, including their remuneration
and assistants that have been registered at their branches.
Dynamics and Remedy
66.
Dynamics and Remedy are the different call logging systems used by the National
Business Support Centre (NBSC), which is the main helpline contacted by
postmasters. Between 2000 and 2014, the NBSC used software called ‘Remedy’
to log calls from Agent branches. In 2014, this system was replaced by
‘Dynamics’. The logs describe briefly the nature of the question asked and answer
given.
Other databases
67.
Post Office also has access to other databases from across its business that help
provide information on its postmasters. For example, the Network and Strategic
Analysis team have access to a Network Reinvention Database that provides dates
of service of its postmasters.
SharePoint
68.
69.
SharePoint is a web-based Microsoft platform that allows teams across Post Office
to save documents to it so that they can be shared. SharePoint is widely used
across Post Office, with many teams having created several sites to hold
documents. Examples of teams that use SharePoint are the Contract Adviser and
Field teams.
The Contract Adviser team is responsible for managing contractual actions related
to postmasters during the lifecycle of their contract. A Contract Adviser will be
involved in recruitment of postmasters, they will manage any contractual variations
such as requests to change opening hours, as well as managing processes such
as suspensions or contractual terminations. Since around 2012, the Contract
Adviser team has been storing electronic documents on a SharePoint site, which is
divided into sub-sites. The Contract Adviser team SharePoint site is around 131
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GB in size and it is estimated to contain in excess of 140,000 documents. This is
just one SharePoint site. It has only been in operation for 5 years, while these
proceedings span 17 years.
70. For these proceedings, Advanced Discovery, an e-disclosure specialist, has been
engaged to help begin scoping the extraction of data from SharePoint and it began
with the Contract Adviser site. This process was a significant project for Post
Office, with input required from Computacenter (Post Office's IT supplier that
manages access to SharePoint), as well as internal input from Post Office's data
and information security teams, IT team and owners of the SharePoint sites. It
took over 100 man hours of Post Office's time and over 25 hours of this firm's time
across 4 months to find a successful way to extract data from this one SharePoint
site. Once a working solution to extract the data was determined, it took over a
week to simply download the data, with the extraction tools running around the
clock.
Lotus Notes
71. Prior to the introduction of SharePoint in around 2012, many teams across Post
Office used e-filing cabinets within Lotus Notes, a form of email software that is
now not commonly used (E-Filing Cabinets).
72. The E-Filing Cabinets were on a server hosted by Royal Mail. Following Post
Office's separation from Royal Mail on 1 April 2012, access to various data across
Post Office was lost, including access to the E-Filing Cabinets.
73. On 28 June 2017, Royal Mail provided Post Office with a copy of the E-Filing
Cabinets. However, this copy is not complete, with for example some attachments
to emails and files embedded in other documents not having been transferred to
Post Office. Significant work will be required by Royal Mail to complete the
extraction exercise from its systems and have these made available to Post Office.
Email
74. Outlook is Post Office's principal email software used by all employees. Advanced
Discovery advises me that in its experience, an average user can be expected to
send and receive 20,000 emails a year (90 emails sent and received a day for 225
working days a year). If it is assumed that there are at least 100 key staff at Post
Office whose email accounts need collecting (which may be a conservative
assumption) over a 17 year period, this would mean capturing around 35,000,000
documents. A particular difficulty here and in many other contexts is that the
absence of specificity in the Claimants’ allegations would make it very difficult (and
perhaps impossible) to devise a reliable system for narrowing down the review by
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using search terms, date ranges and the other methods ordinarily used to reduce
the pool of documents to those that require human review.
Network drives
75.
Some teams, such as the Security Team (which investigates fraud and criminal
misconduct) and Post Office's in-house Legal team, do not use SharePoint, but use
shared drives on a Post Office IT network. As an example of the volume of data on
these Network Drives, in July 2015 data was collected from the drives of the
Security and Legal teams in response to mandatory statutory requests for
information made by the Criminal Cases Review Commission, who are reviewing a
small number of Post Office's past prosecutions. This exercise alone extracted
around 200,000 documents.
Archived and local data
76
The systems outlined in this section represent the current and more recent IT
usage. There have been other systems and databases that have been taken
offline. Depending on the nature of specific allegations raised by Claimants, it may
be necessary to access back-up tapes of data to reconstruct the state of databases
at a certain date. Some teams also hold data on archived hard drives and memory
sticks, or store data on their personal devices, such as laptop hard-drives. Post
Office may need to collect all of these in and review them, depending on the scope
of disclosure that is ordered.
Hard copy documents
77.
In addition to the above IT systems, there are several teams at Post Office that are
still paper-based, or regularly use paper records. I describe some of the principal
teams below.
Former Agent Debt Team
78.
The Former Agent Debt team manages shortfalls that have accrued in
postmasters' accounts who no longer have a relationship with Post Office or have
been suspended. The team's records are primarily paper based and many of them
have been archived. Retrieving these files, and then scanning them into a data
room so that they can be disclosed, will be a significant exercise, taking many
months.
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Contract Adviser Team
79,
The Contract Adviser team maintains hard copy files. The hard copy files are not
duplicates of the electronic files discussed above. Current postmaster files are
kept at Post Office's Chesterfield office and former postmaster files are archived.
The files are organised by branch so that each file will contain information relevant
to all those postmasters and temporary postmasters who have operated a branch.
They will need a manual review to extract information that pertains to the
Claimants.
Branch records
80.
81.
82
Postmasters are required as part of branch process to run certain reports every
month and retain a paper copy. Once a postmaster’s contract terminates, the
paperwork is typically sorted into archive storage boxes and stored with Box-lt,
Post Office's off-site storage provider. Generally, there can be up to 5 boxes of
paperwork removed from each branch. Taking into consideration that there are
currently 11,500 branches in the Post Office network and that in recent years
through both Network Transformation and general turnover there has been
significant change in the branches across the network, there is likely to be
thousands of boxes stored with Box-It.
The paper reports are not printed on A4 sheets but on till rolls. These rolls will
each be several feet long. To catalogue and disclose all of these till rolls will be a
large task for Post Office, even bearing in mind the logistical difficulties of trying to
scan or copy sections of numerous long till rolls.
It should be noted that those Claimants who are still operating as postmasters will
hold this information in their branches and that Post Office's ability to retain the
paperwork is limited by the postmaster having printed and stored it in the first place
and then allowing Post Office access to remove it.
The Claimants’ orders for “generic” disclosure
83.
In the light of the information set out above, I now discuss the 7 categories of
disclosure that the Claimants seek in paragraph 3 of the Freeths Order. In my
respectful view, the Claimants’ requests are a fishing expedition. Complying with
them would be vastly expensive and would take many months.
Horizon system architecture
84. In paragraph 3a of the Freeths Order, the Claimants are seeking documents about
“the Horizon system architecture”.
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85.
86.
87.
88.
89.
90.
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The Horizon system has undergone many changes since it was fully rolled out in
2000, with Horizon Online introduced in 2010. In the original Horizon system,
changes were released in batches for different parts of the system. There were
dozens of major releases on the main system, with many more minor releases.
Since the introduction of Horizon Online, there have been 15 major releases, each
with up to 10 sub-releases. Any of these could contain a number of changes in
functionality driven by code changes.
There is also a programme of patching and updating of operating systems and
associated code changes, where required, to maintain the relationship between
Horizon and other systems that communicate with it.
Fujitsu keeps a library of the key technical documentation regarding Horizon and
Horizon Online in a content management system called Dimensions. Dimensions
holds 4,165 live technical documents for the current Horizon system. There are
also 22,025 technical documents for historical versions of Horizon.
Whilst the documents do show the date they were updated and signed off, for an
expert to read into the system would be an extremely time-consuming task. In
order for that expert to understand what the system looked like on a particular date,
they would need to digest all of these documents, check for the version of the
documentation that was in force on the date in question and link each relevant
document together to recreate a picture of the system on that date. Fujitsu doubt
that this would create a perfect picture of all aspects of a historic version of
Horizon, but believe it would allow an expert to understand the high-level system
architecture on a given date.
On average, around 250 to 350 people at Fujitsu work on the Post Office account
at one time, although this number varies depending if specific project work is being
undertaken. Over the 17 years since the system was rolled out, there have been
thousands of people at Fujitsu who have worked on Horizon and it is not now
possible to trace who worked on the system at what time. All of these people will
have created emails, documents and draft documents, in addition to the technical
documents described above.
Consequently, whilst the Horizon technical documentation can, with Fujitsu's
consent, be located and extracted relatively easily, to capture all documents
regarding the Horizon system architecture would require an enormous search. In
my respectful view this is a disproportionate exercise at this stage in the litigation,
especially where the problems in Horizon about which the Claimants purport to
complain have not been identified, making it impossible to narrow down the
exercise to targeted areas.
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91.
92
93.
94.
95.
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It should also be noted that many of these documents are not under Post Office's
control. Fujitsu maintains some documents for Post Office to which Post Office
has a right of access, but there are many other documents that are Fujitsu's
internal documents, many of which are commercially sensitive know-how which
belong to and are confidential to Fujitsu. Post Office is reliant on Fujitsu's
cooperation in gaining access to these documents.
Moreover, I understand that these documents may contain highly sensitive
information about the security controls in Horizon. Public release of this
information could undermine the security of the system. This is a particular
concern in this litigation, where a number of the Claimants have convictions for
offences of dishonesty.
These concerns apply to the technical documents library. However, Fujitsu is at
present willing to allow access to those documents on a voluntary basis, subject to
certain safeguards. Those safeguards are that (i) the Claimants’ expert initially
views the technical documents at Fujitsu's office in Bracknell and (ii) the IT expert
signs a Non-Disclosure Agreement. If copies of technical documents need to be
provided, this can be considered once those documents have been identified and
their content and sensitivity are understood by both sides to the litigation.
In the meantime, Fujitsu has identified what it believes to be the 4 best documents
describing Horizon. These are listed in Schedule 1 of the Bond Dickinson Order.
Provided a suitable Non-Disclosure Agreement is signed, Fujitsu is prepared to
release these directly to the Claimants’ IT expert. Fujitsu has also offered to allow
him to inspect the 4,165 documents described in paragraph ia above, so that he
can form a view as to what further documents he needs and why.
I believe that this approach to disclosure will give the Claimants access to the
information they need without the disproportionate disclosure exercise that they are
proposing.
Bugs, errors or defects in the system
96.
In paragraph 3b of the Freeths Order, the Claimants are seeking disclosure of
“bugs, errors or defects in the Horizon system which were, or may have been, the
cause of discrepancies or alleged shortfalls” attributed to the Claimants. This
request is extremely broad, being based on the very vague allegations in the
Amended GPOC (see paragraphs 22 to 24 of Amended GPOC), which provides
the only basis on which Post Office could presently guess as to whether or not
any bug or defect “may” have been the cause of a discrepancy or shortfall.
Moreover, bugs are not given unique designations and there are no convenient
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keywords that could be searched within the millions of documents held by Fujitsu
in order to locate documents relating to them. The order sought by Freeths would
be extremely difficult and costly to comply with, and would be likely to produce
considerable irrelevant material.
Operation of the helpline
97. In paragraph 3c of the Freeths Order, the Claimants are seeking documents in
relation to “the operation of the helpline”. As I have already sought to explain, the
Amended GPOC and SOls are vague, and give little indication as to the particular
things the helpline is alleged to have said to particular Claimants in particular
contexts at particular times.
98. There is more than one "helpline" available to postmasters and the different
helplines have different documents and store them in different ways.
NBSC Helpline
99. The NBSC helpline is usually the first contact point for queries from branches for
operational support. On average over the last 17 years, between 50 and 70
members of staff have worked at the NBSC at any particular point in time. NBSC
receives on average 35,700 calls per month (based on data obtained for 2016/17).
I note that the Amended GPOC tends to make allegations about how Post Office
generally instructed staff to do or say things or how the helpline is generally run,
rather than identifying specific advice given by the helpline to specific Claimants in
specific contexts or at specific times. Post Office may need to trawl through
millions of calls and gather documents from hundreds of staff in order to give
disclosure relevant to these allegations.
100. NBSC advisers all have access to a tool called Knowledge Base which is used to
answer questions. Dynamics will direct the adviser to an article depending on the
points raised by the caller. There are currently around 5,000 different articles
within Knowledge Base, which is hosted on a SharePoint site. Given the lack of
particulars from the Claimants it is therefore not possible at this stage to identify
which parts of the Knowledge Base may be relevant to the Claimants’ claims. This
only leaves the option of disclosing the whole Knowledge Base of around 5,000
articles. This would be a difficult thing to do, because unless all of the articles are
printed manually, scoping would need to be carried out to identify how, and where
the articles are stored in SharePoint. I explain at paragraph (9 above the
difficulties with extracting data from the Contract Adviser SharePoint site.
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101.
102.
Claim No: HQ16X01238 and HQ17X02637
As described at paragraph Fq above, logs of calls to the NBSC are entered into
Remedy or Dynamics. It should be possible to give disclosure of logs of particular
calls that were made between particular Claimants’ branches and NBSC.
Other documents generated on the operation of NBSC include training materials.
New NBSC staff receive training and ongoing training is provided to NBSC staff on
new products and services as they are introduced. There will also be other
planning documents on the operation of the NBSC. These will generally be stored
in emails and potentially on SharePoint. Accessing these materials would require
the capture and review of potentially dozens of email accounts and laptops.
Information on staffing planning is contained within a system called Verint. The
Amended GPOC does not say enough to make it clear whether these materials will
be relevant.
Horizon support
103.
104.
105.
106.
Post Office and its postmasters have access to a help desk called Horizon Service
Desk (HSD) to manage technical issues with Horizon. The HSD is currently
provided by an external IT provider, ATOS. It was provided by Fujitsu prior to June
2014.
Both Fujitsu and ATOS retain logs of calls from their tenure running the HSD
However, it will be technically very difficult to access logs from during Fujitsu's
tenure between 2001 and September 2009. This is because the call logging
system Fujitsu used for this period (Powerhelp) was taken offline due to it being
run on redundant software. Fujitsu estimate that the cost of attempting to access
the Powerhelp data could be up to £50,000, with no guarantee of success. There
would also be a cost for maintaining access to the data if the restoration was
successful, but Fujitsu is unable to provide a quotation for this until a solution has
been devised.
ATOS estimates that to retrieve its call logs for around 50 branches over a 4 month
period would take 10 working days and cost up to £5,000. If one assumes that this
litigation may require the retrieval of logs for 100 branches over a 3 year period
(noting that ATOS took over the HSD in 2014), this could cost over £500,000.
Post Office's on-site IT engineers are provided by Computacenter. If the HSD is
unable to resolve an issue over the telephone, then support from Computacenter
and Fujitsu may be needed. Both suppliers hold relevant records of this support.
As with the Horizon documentation discussed in paragraphs 87] to above, it is
likely that some of this material is not within Post Office's control and substantial
cooperation from Computacenter and Fujitsu will be needed.
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107. In light of the above, an unfocused disclosure of documents relating to helplines
would be a very difficult and expensive exercise and be liable to either miss
relevant documents or disclose irrelevant documents. The key material will be the
logs of calls made by Claimants to the NBSC helpline and Post Office can provide
disclosure of these in a proportionate manner if limited to a reasonable number of
Claimants who have recently been postmasters.
Conduct of investigations
108. In paragraph 3d of the Freeths Order, the Claimants are seeking documents on the
“conduct of investigations". However, I understand that the term "investigation"
could include the activities of a wide variety of teams at Post Office including the
FSC, Field Support, Fraud Analysis, Cash Management, Security and Contract
Adviser teams.
109. Documents for all of these teams will be held in different places across the
business. The Contracts and Policy Development Team develops policies for the
business in conjunction with individual teams. Whilst the Policy team drafts the
policy, guidance on interpretation is held within individual teams, for example the
Contract Adviser Team may also issue informal guidance and updates by email or
memo to its members. Locating a policy on "investigations" and related guidance
would therefore require a search of email inboxes, laptop hard drives, SharePoint
sites and network drives for many staff within each team. To put this in context,
the Contract Adviser team has had around 40 employees since 2000 and this is
just one of the teams that would need searching and probably manually reviewing.
110. The Policy team has since around 2013 used a SharePoint site for documents but
prior to this some documents were kept in paper form. To locate old records of
policies would require Post Office looking back through the records of former
members of the Policy team for outdated documents no longer in use. This may
involve pulling archives of hardcopy documents.
111. One important "investigation" document is an audit report, which details the
findings of a Post Office audit of a branch. The audit reports may be in the form of
an email or a spreadsheet but are clearly identifiable as a report prepared following
a branch audit, typically with a summary table showing any shortfalls that were
found and in respect of which of Post Office's assets. Although audit reports can
be saved in many different locations they are commonly used documents that Post
Office can usually locate.
112. In light of the above, Post Office considers that to give disclosure in relation to
"investigations" would be a huge exercise, requiring it to review years of emails and
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documents and then largely guess at what might or might not be relevant in light of
the vaguely pleaded issues in the Amended GPOC.
Moreover, several of the Claimants have been convicted of criminal offences and
there are questions over the honesty of other Claimants. The Fraud Analysis,
Cash Management and Security Teams are concerned that, unless protective
measures are put in place, disclosing their process and policy documents,
especially to current postmasters, would put Post Office's cash at risk because it
would reveal what indicia are relied upon to trigger an investigation. Without
revealing the precise nature of the controls that are in place, I can only say that
Post Office considers that a postmaster aware of the precise controls and triggers
would be far better able to remove Post Office cash or stock without this being
apparent to Post Office. It may well be that disclosure of these policy documents, if
/ when needed, will have to be made subject to special confidentiality terms or
other protections.
Training policies and practices
114
115.
116.
117.
In paragraph 3e of the Freeths Order, the Claimants are seeking documents on
training policies and practices, particularly where Post Office imposed new
practices or systems or required new services.
Post Office provides a combination of classroom and on-site training for new
postmasters depending on the postmaster’s previous experience (some may
already have been or be operating other branches). The materials for these
courses have changed over time depending on the products offered by Post Office
and its policies.
Whilst training is given when an agent first joins the Post Office network or when
their branch undergoes a change of model, training is also given at various other
points in time. For example, when auditors visit a branch and see that processes
are not being followed, they may give on the spot training. Training given may be
recorded in the branch file or in an audit report. Training can also be given for
more specific purposes, such as for the introduction of Horizon Online, or by
external companies, such as the Bank of Ireland on how to use ATMs.
Retention of training materials for the initial training courses depends on the staff
responsible for developing the materials having kept them. Some training
materials have been uploaded to SharePoint, some are kept on network drives and
some have been kept on laptop hard drives. To attempt to locate all of the training
materials, Post Office would need also to contact all trainers since 2000 to
understand what materials were produced and where they were kept. To put this
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in context, Post Office estimates that at any one time around 100 - 200 staff may
be involved in giving training.
Again, the allegations in the Amended GPOC are very imprecise. They do not
identify particular types of training, but call into question training of all types given
by Post Office over 17 years. As things stand, the Claimants' request for
disclosure would require Post Office to search for and review hundreds of
thousands of documents and then guess at what might be relevant. I anticipate
that this would lead to the disclosure of at least tens of thousands of irrelevant
documents. The better way to proceed would be for each Claimant to identify the
aspects of their training that they believe were deficient and then Post Office can
provide further disclosure on these issues in a more targeted manner.
Post Office suspense accounts
119.
120.
122.
In paragraph 3f of the Freeths Order, the Claimants are seeking documents
relating to Post Office's suspense accounts, with no clear explanation as to what
they mean by this phrase.
The Letter of Claim of 28 April 2016 did not make any allegation in relation to
suspense accounts. It was not until the Claimant's 62-page letter of 27 October
2016 that the issue was raised, at paragraph 23 which referred to ‘circumstances
where Post Office holds surpluses in suspense accounts, which after 3 years are
credited to its profits' and alleged that Post Office benefits from errors wrongly
attributed to postmasters (see also paragraph 72).
The Amended GPOC repeated this issue, in that it refers at paragraphs 38 and 39
to suspense accounts in which Post Office is alleged to have ‘held unattributed
surpluses’ and that after '3 years, such unattributed surpluses were credited to the
Defendant's profits’.
From discussions with Post Office's finance team, I understand that the term
“suspense account" does not have a fixed meaning in accounting jargon; it is a
generic accounting term. This broad topic was briefly discussed during the
Scheme with Second Sight, but it is not clear whether the Claimants’ case is based
on and/or goes beyond the points raised by Second Sight. It is therefore unclear
as to what the Claimants mean when they refer to a suspense account or
unattributed surpluses. I note that the Claimants say in their Generic Reply that
Post Office must know what is meant, which I believe is regrettable given that Post
Office's Generic Defence is clear on this point and is confirmed by a Statement of
Truth. In any event, I will explain why the Claimants’ allegations are not as clear as
they think.
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123.
124.
125.
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The Claimants appear to allege that there are specific suspense accounts where
monies are held that have not been resolved, with Post Office then benefiting from
those discrepancies because they are ultimately released to profit. Almost any
account operated by Post Office could in theory hold unattributed sums, and
identifying accounts that may, at one time or another, be considered to have
operated in part in this way is difficult.
Within Post Office's finance system, POL SAP, and its archive there is
approximately 24.2 terabytes of data. Post Office's finance teams have been
asked to identify which of these might be classed as suspense accounts. They
estimate that there are 119 ledgers that might fall into this bracket, however this
exercise was subject to numerous assumptions as to precisely how to classify an
account's functions. It is important to understand that these accounts were not just
or even mainly used for "suspense account" type movements but other purposes
as well, such as moving items between back office accounts and profit and loss in
the usual course of business.
As matters stand, the Claimants' current request for disclosure would require a
disclosure of all accounting information in at least these 119 accounts, much of
which would be irrelevant. Provision of this vast amount of information in a usable
format would not be straightforward as it would be coming in a database format
that is not readily accessible without certain software. Moreover, unless the
Claimants intend to undertake a forensic accounting exercise on this data, Post
Office cannot see what utility this information would be to the Claimants at this
stage of the proceedings. As far as I am aware the Claimants have not yet
engaged a forensic accounting expert, and there has been no request for an order
permitting expert evidence of this kind.
Documents delivered up by Second Sight
126.
127.
128.
At paragraph 3g of the Freeths Order, the Claimants are seeking disclosure of
35,000 documents delivered up by Second Sight following termination of its
contract for services to Post Office arising out of the Post Office Complaints
Review and Mediation Scheme described at paragraphs 24-25 of Parsons 2.
These documents contain a significant amount of privileged material that would
need to be removed. It will also contain irrelevant material relating to people who
are not Claimants and relating to the operation of the Scheme.
A significant part of the documents consists of large numbers of emails with drafts
of reports and internal Second Sight discussions on particular cases before
finalising its reports. In my view, the most important documents would plainly be
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the reports actually produced by Second Sight (rather than documents showing
only what Second Sight might have considered saying but did not say). The
Claimants already have these. The Claimants also have direct access to Second
Sight. From my own experience of the Scheme, I do not think it likely that much
could be extracted from these documents that would be of any significant use to
the Claimants. I estimate that to review all the documents returned by Second
Sight will cost around £75,000.
129. Nevertheless, Post Office is prepared to disclose these documents on the basis set
out in the Bond Dickinson Order.
Standard disclosure in Lead Cases
130. For the reasons stated above, giving so-called generic disclosure of the type
sought by the Claimants from Post Office would be extremely difficult, time
consuming and expensive, not least because of the lack of specificity in the claims,
the wide date range of the Claimants’ claims, the many different locations in which
documents are held and the many different teams that will hold them. The difficulty
is compounded by the lack of clarity in the SOls, the Amended GPOC and the
Generic Reply.
131. Turning to the Claimants’ proposal for standard disclosure on Lead Cases sought
in paragraph 2b of the Freeths Order, I believe that such an order will neither be
possible nor proportionate.
132. It is important to understand that the Claimants are not providing for the Lead
Cases to be pleaded out before disclosure is given. Post Office will not therefore
know what specific issues each Lead Case is raising. In this situation, it does not
make sense to talk about “standard disclosure”: in the absence of pleadings, there
would be no fact-specific allegations and issues on the Lead Claims that would
enable the CPR test to be applied in any meaningful way. For example, one would
not know what Post Office is alleged to have said or done to a particular Lead
Claimant or when it is alleged to have been said or done, and one would not know
how or when that postmaster is alleged to have suffered the loss and other injuries
he claims.
133. Without pleadings setting out the parties’ respective cases with the requisite
degree of particularity, I do not understand how standard disclosure would be
possible. It may be that the Claimants are expecting Post Office to give disclosure
of all dealings and other interactions between Post Office and the Lead Claimants.
However, a full disclosure process of that sort would plainly be disproportionate. In
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any event, even if standard disclosure could sensibly be given, it would still give
rise to all the problems outlined above in relation to “generic” disclosure.
134. At this stage, I would estimate that the cost to Post Office of Freeths’ disclosure
orders (including both generic and standard disclosure) would likely be between £2
million and £6 million, and that it would take at least 9 months, and possibly as
much as 15 months, to complete the exercise.
Disclosure already given by Post Office
135. The Claimants’ proposals for disclosure should also be assessed in the context of
the amount of disclosure that Post Office has already given voluntarily, and what
the Claimants appear to have done (or not done) with this disclosure.
136. By their Letter of Claim of 28 April 2016, the Claimants made 32 wide-ranging
requests for disclosure, many of which did not seem relevant, reasonable or
proportionate, particularly where grounds for the disclosure had not been
particularised, and some of the requested disclosure was privileged. By its Letter
of Response of 28 July 2016, Post Office agreed to provide disclosure in respect of
8 of those requests (as far as it was reasonably able), it requested clarification in
respect of 4 requests and it referred Freeths to its clients in respect of a further 4
requests, since many of the relevant documents would have been provided as part
of the Scheme (hundreds of pages of documents were shared with most of the
participating postmasters).
137. On 31 August 2016, Post Office gave disclosure of the following items:
137.1 Copies of the contractual documents and variations between Post Office
and its postmasters. These included:
(a) 1994 Subpostmaster contract (consolidated version)
(b) Acknowledgement of appointment of postmaster
(c) Branch standards booklet
(d) Branch standards contract variation
(e) Conformance booklet
(f) Subpostmaster Paystation terms and conditions
137.2 Fujitsu contract
137.3. Course materials for Horizon training
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137.4 Audit guidelines
137.5 Documents surrounding the termination of the Scheme
137.6 Draft witness statement of Martin Rolfe (regarding an allegation of
“remote access" to Horizon)
137.7 Internal email correspondence between Alan Lusher and Andrew Winn of
Post Office regarding branch accounts
137.8 Post Office documents on certain Horizon issues previously discussed
with Second Sight
137.9 Second Sight's terms of engagement
137.10 Post Office notes on retract fraud on ATMS and audit trails on Girobank
deposits
137.11 Areport by Graham Brander of Post Office on the investigation into the
branch run by Josephine Hamilton (Claimant 69)
137.12 The Scheme rules
137.13 The Scheme Working Group's terms of reference
137.14 Minutes of the Scheme Working Group's meeting of 17 October 2014
137.15 Post Office notes on suspense accounts
137.16 Asample branch trading statement
138. As noted in paragraph [34 above, Post Office had referred Freeths to its clients for
several of these documents (of the 198 Claimants named on the first claim form,
88 participated in the Scheme). Although Freeths confirmed on 29 March 2017
that it had ‘advised all of our clients in respect of their obligations to preserve all
disclosable documents’, no indication of what documents the Claimants hold that
would assist them or narrow their disclosure requests has been given. Freeths has
recently provided a disclosure report which contains practically no information
about the documents held by its clients. This seems consistent with little or no
work having been done to obtain the many significant documents many of them will
have. The Claimants have declined to give Post Office any disclosure of their own.
139. The disclosure given by Post Office also does not appear to have been properly
considered by the Claimants. On 10 April 2017, Post Office gave disclosure of 140
contractual documents relating to the Claimants. This took at least 100 man hours
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of Post Office's time as well as the costs of my firm in assisting in the collation and
review of the contracts.
140. Having undertaken this large and costly exercise, in its letter of 10 April 2017 (page
184) my firm asked the Claimants to ‘undertake a similar exercise in locating the
contractual documents held by each Claimant’ to ensure the parties held matching
documentation and to help fill the gaps for contracts Post Office had been unable
to find (in part due to the time since some of the contracts were terminated). No
such contracts have been provided by the Claimants
141. On reviewing the SOls, it was clear that the disclosed documents had not been
taken into account. Examples of this are set out in paragraph 3 of my firm's letter
of 1 September 2017 (page 85).
SECTION 3: POST OFFICE'S PROPOSED DIRECTIONS
142. The Bond Dickinson Order is at page 51. Its main provisions are explained in my
firm's covering letter at page 38. In summary:
142.1
142.2
142.3
142.4
142.5
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Paragraph 1 of the Bond Dickinson Order provides for a process by
which 40 Potential Lead Claimants are selected by the parties.
Paragraph 2 provides for Post Office (i) to make certain Horizon
documents available for inspection by the Claimants’ IT expert and for
Post Office to disclose three categories of documents to the Claimants,
namely (ii) a full set of Post Office's standard postmaster contracts
(although most of these have already been provided), (iii) relevant and
non-privileged copies of the documents delivered up by Second Sight at
the end of the Scheme (see paragraphs above) and (iv) copies
of the settlement agreements entered into between Post Office and many
Claimants (see paragraph below).
Paragraph 3 provides for those Claimants who have claims for personal
injuries to disclose their medical records to Post Office.
Paragraphs 4 to 7 provide for Post Office and the Lead Claimants to give
early disclosure of certain specified categories of documents.
Paragraph 9 leaves a gap for what Post Office hopes will be an agreed
questionnaire process by which sufficient details of the individual claims
made by the Claimants are provided to enable a proper assessment to
be made of the range of claims which Post Office faces and of how that
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143.
142.6
142.7
142.8
142.9
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range of claims can be broken down into categories and managed
accordingly.
Paragraphs 10 to 14 provides for the court to consider directing a trial of
certain contractual questions as preliminary issues, for which purpose
Lead Claimants are to be selected and their claims pleaded out.
Paragraphs 15 to 18 provide for the striking out of certain claims, unless
certain steps are taken by the Claimants.
Paragraphs 19 to 23 provide for the Claimants to give information as to
(i) the factual bases on which Claimants whose claims are more than 6
years old contend that their claims are not time-barred, (ii) the factual
bases on which Claimants who have settled their claims against Post
Office contend that their claims are not barred by their settlement
agreements, (iii) the Claimants who submitted false accounts to Post
Office and why they say they did so, and (iv) the amounts of the
Claimants’ various heads of claim.
Paragraphs 24 to 32 address various other matters, including costs.
I do not propose in this statement to recite the arguments in favour of these
directions, but there are some factual points which I believe it would be helpful for
me to address.
Early Disclosure
144. To address the problems with the disclosure sought in the Freeths Order, Post
145.
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Office proposes a targeted approach which should not impose undue difficulty or
expense on any of the parties. The categories of Post Office disclosure provided
for in paragraph 2 and the categories of mutual disclosure provided for in
paragraphs 4 to 7 should be clear in the light of the matters discussed in Sections
1 and 2 above.
This disclosure is designed to provide (i) documents that will assist the parties in
pleading as to the Lead Claims; (ii) documents that will help the Claimants better
understand Horizon’s operations and help the parties to discuss case management
in this regard, including as to any orders for expert evidence and disclosure in
relation to Horizon that may be appropriate; and (iii) documents connected with the
further information being sought by Post Office. It is a form of staged disclosure
and it is not intended to be a substitute for standard disclosure.
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Horizon documents
146.
Post Office hopes that providing the Claimant's expert with access to documents in
relation to Horizon will ultimately allow them to take a more realistic view of the
merits of their vague allegations about Horizon. Post Office does not accept that
any proper or viable claim has been formulated or pleaded in this regard, and it
proposes to give disclosure to break the current impasse in which the Claimants
insist that they do not know enough to enable them to plead a properly
particularised claim. Post Office proposes to facilitate access for the Claimants' IT
expert to the 26,000 technical documents described at paragraph above. This
is in addition to access to the Known Error Log and Second Sight, which have
been offered in correspondence.
Settlement Agreements
147.
As I explain in paragraphs [F640 169 below, Post Office contends that at least 114
Claimants have entered into settlement agreements by which they have settled the
claims they are seeking to make in these proceedings. It is proposing an order that
it disclose the relevant settlement agreements to the Claimants and, as I explain in
paragraph below, it is also proposing an order that the relevant Claimants set
out the essential facts they rely on in order to avoid those settlement agreements.
Medical reports
148.
More than 65% of the Claimants have asserted a claim for personal injury in their
SOls, which Post Office assumes means psychiatric injury. However, in the light of
the questions it has raised about the preparation of the SOls as discussed in
paragraph above, Post Office is gravely concerned that many Claimants have
asserted a personal injury claim when no recognisable psychiatric injury has in fact
been suffered, thereby artificially increasing the true scope of the claims. Post
Office is therefore seeking disclosure of the Claimants’ medical records in
accordance with what I understand to be common practice in personal injury
cases.
Disclosure between Post Office and Lead Claimants
149.
Paragraphs 4-7 of the Bond Dickinson Order requires disclosure of certain defined
documents for every Potential Lead Claimant. These categories vary slightly
between postmasters and assistants and also vary depending on whether the
disclosure is to be given by Post Office or Claimant. Some of the categories are
self-explanatory and some have been explained above. As to the others:
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150.
151.
Claim No: HQ16X01238 and HQ17X02637
149.1. The signed Confirmations of Appointment and signed Prefaces are the
contractual documents signifying that the postmaster accepts Post
Office's terms.
149.2 I Transaction and Event data recorded on Horizon for the Potential Lead
Claimant's Branch(es) as described in paragraph fal above. It will show
details of transactions undertaken in the Branch(es), as well as actions
undertaken by the Horizon user, which can assist in understanding how
any issues arose. As set out at paragraph ia above, the extraction of
transaction and event data is a time consuming process. It should be
possible to devise a method for extracting the necessary data by the
deadline set out in the Bond Dickinson Order but this could only be
confirmed once the parties have chosen Potential Lead Claimants and
Post Office knows the amount of data involved.
149.3. The Customer Account from POL SAP or Core Finance (as applicable) is
a report produced from POL SAP or Core Finance that shows shortfalls
in a postmaster's account at FSC. It shows how that shortfall has
accrued, for example at audit or if the debt has been settled centrally,
and the payments or deductions that have been made in respect of the
shortfall.
The disclosure documents proposed by Post Office could be said to cover the life-
cycle of a typical postmaster from appointment, operation of their branch,
termination and then any post-termination actions. As a solicitor at Bond
Dickinson, I have been working for Post Office for nearly ten years and in my
experience the documents Post Office proposes to disclose are those most
commonly referred to in any dispute between a postmaster and Post Office.
In relation to the disclosure which Post Office proposes for the Potential Lead
Claimants, an additional category sought from lead Claimants is documents
relating to the losses they claim to have suffered (as only the Claimants will hold
these).
Preliminary issues
152.
As indicated in my firm's letter of 4 October 2017, Post Office's proposal regarding
the trial of preliminary issues is a tentative one. It is conscious that there are risks
and disadvantages associated with seeking to determine this relationship
separately from other issues that are in dispute.
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Strike Out
Claim No: HQ16X01238 and HQ17X02637
153. Regarding the Claimants’ claims for conspiracy, misfeasance in public office and
for breach of the ECHR, none of which are pleaded in the Amended GPOC, the
following points should be noted:
153.1
153.2
153.3
153.4
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Conspiracy: By its letter of 11 July 2017, my firm objected to the
continued inclusion of this claim in the claim forms (page 13). Freeths
responded on 19 September 2017, stating that the Claimants would
agree to amend the claim forms to withdraw the conspiracy claims if Post
Office was minded to apply to strike the claims out (page 26). Post
Office is so minded. It is strongly of the view that the claim should never
have been made in the first place.
Misfeasance: Freeths’ Letter of Claim dated 28 April 2016 asserted a
claim for misfeasance in public office, and in its Letter of Response of 28
July 2016, my firm explained by reference to the authorities why Post
Office could not be treated as a public authority for the purposes of the
tort. In its Letter of Reply dated 27 October 2016 Freeths stated that it
had considered the objections my firm raised and decided not to pursue
the point. Consistently with this, no claim for misfeasance was asserted
in the Amended GPOC. However, the claim remains in the original claim
form, and it was subsequently repeated in the second claim form.
By its letter of 1 September 2017, my firm objected to the continued
inclusion of this claim in the claim forms (page 13). In its response of 19
September 2017, Freeths claimed for the first time that misfeasance in
public office related to the malicious prosecution claims and that any
particularisation would depend on the outcome of the Criminal Cases
Review Commission's review into the Claimants’ prosecutions (page 27).
This contention is not consistent with the Claimants’ previous
correspondence and I believe that it is obviously untenable. I further
believe that the Claimants have no real prospect of succeeding on any
claim for misfeasance in public office and that it would be in accordance
with the overriding objective for the claim to be struck out.
ECHR: At no point in the Letter of Claim, in any subsequent
correspondence or in the Amended GPOC did the Claimants articulate a
claim under the ECHR. In response to my firm's objection to the claim in
its letter of 1 September 2017 (page 13), Freeths also claimed that the
ECHR claims related to the malicious prosecution claims (page 27).
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153.5 I believe that these Claimants have no real prospect of succeeding on
any claim under the ECHR and that it would be in accordance with the
overriding objective for the claim to be struck out.
154. In the correspondence at pages 14 and 47, my firm has asked various questions
about whether various Claimants who have been made bankrupt or who have died
have standing to bring their claims. In the light of that correspondence, the orders
suggested by the Claimants require no further explanation.
Further information
155. The orders sought for details of the Claimants’ cases on limitation, settlement, false
accounting and quantum are matters for submission. However, in paragraphs
169 below, I explain why Post Office believes that the claims of a considerable
number of claimants are either time-barred or have been settled. In their Generic
Reply, the Claimants dispute this with little more than bare denials. It appears that
the relevant Claimants do not wish to reveal the particular facts they rely in support
of their denials. In Post Office's view, all or most of these Claimants have no
proper evidential basis for denying these things, and it is in the overriding interest
for them to be required to reveal their hand. It is in no-one’s interest to allow their
claims to escape scrutiny indefinitely.
Other orders
156. I hope that the parties will be in agreement in relation to ADR and costs. I should
make it clear note that security for costs remains a live issue. Discussions with
Freeths are continuing on the question of whether and if so how security should be
given and Post Office reserves its right to make a security application in the future.
SECTION 4: THE CATEGORIES OF CLAIMANTS
157. By the Bond Dickinson Order, Post Office is proposing:
157.1 that specific provisions be made for Claimants who are bringing claims
as postmasters or assistants;
157.2 _ that information be provided regarding potentially time-barred claims; and
157.3 that further information be provided regarding potentially settled claims.
158. This section contains an analysis of the Claimants falling in these categories, so
as to show the number of Claimants who are likely to be affected.
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Categories of Claimants
159. In paragraphs 69 to 86 of Parsons 2 I explained the different types of Claimants.
From a review of the SOls provided by the Claimants, I understand that the
Claimants fall into the following groups:
159.1 453 of the Claimants are / were postmasters.
159.2 25 of the Claimants are / were assistants.
159.3. 4 of the Claimants are / were crown employees.
159.4 11 of the Claimants are / were companies.
159.5 3 of the Claimants have entered into guarantee agreements with Post
Office in respect of a company which has contracted with Post Office.
159.6 6 of the Claimants are / were directors of their respective companies
which have contracted with Post Office.
160. These numbers are not precise because the information in the SOls is unclear
(sometimes to the extent that Post Office has not been able to categories some
Claimants at all) and some Claimants have had multiple roles e.g. they were an
assistant who became a postmaster. I believe however the above figures broadly
reflects the split of different types of Claimants in these proceedings.
161. At paragraph 1 of the Bond Dickinson Order, it has been proposed that the
selection of Lead Claimants is limited to Claimants who are asserting claims as a
Subpostmaster or an assistant. Bond Dickinson's Order seeks to exclude Crown
employees, companies’ guarantors and directors from being selected as Potential
Lead Claimants since they are not representative of the Claimants as a group.
Time-barred Cases
162. The Bond Dickinson Order requires certain Claimants to give details of the facts on
which they rely in order to avoid limitation.
163. Post Office is not yet in a position to positively assert a limitation date for each of
the Claimants, because the Claimants have not particularised their claims to an
extent which would enable Post Office to carry out the analysis needed to advance
a comprehensive case on limitation. However, each of the Claimants has provided
Post Office with a SOI which includes their termination date. This provides a rough
indication as to the likelinood of a limitation defence to be available
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164. It should be noted that not all the Claimants have the same prima facie limitation
date. Ignoring the claims made for personal injury (for which the limitation period is
3 years),
those Claimants named in the original Claim Form have a limitation date
of 11 April 2010, those Claimants whose names were added to the amended Claim
Form have a limitation date of 3 August 2010 and those Claimants named in the
Second Claim Form have a limitation date of 24 July 2011.
165. From a review of the SOls, I am aware that:
165.1
165.2
165.3
165.4
Settled Cases
192 Claimants (38% of the total number of Claimants) have termination
dates prior to their respective limitation dates indicated above. These
Claimants are highly likely to be time-barred. They are the Claimants
identified in Schedule 5 to the Bond Dickinson Order.
A number of Claimants are bringing claims in relation to their tenures at
multiple branches and, of these, 23 (4.5%) are advancing a claim in
respect of a branch where their termination date is prior to their
respective limitation date.
About 90 (18%) of the remaining Claimants’ appointments were mainly
prior to their respective limitation date. In the event that losses have
been sought for these periods, the losses claimed by these Claimants
may be exaggerated.
Only 100 Claimants (19%) have been appointed within the last 6 years.
These are the only Claimants for whom it can be said with certainty that
they will not be subject to a limitation defence.
166. The Bond Dickinson Order requires certain other Claimants who have previously
entered into settlement agreements with Post Office to specify the facts on which
they rely to avoid these settlements. These Claimants can be split into two
categories:
166.1
166.2
Claimants who were part of the Scheme; and
Claimants who were part of the Network Transformation programme.
167. The Scheme handled complaints raised by postmasters and where mediation was
successful, formal settlement agreements were entered into. 12 of the Claimants
are party to such settlement agreements with Post Office, which provided that they
were in full and final settlement, to release any and all claims, whether or not
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presently known to the parties that they ever had against Post Office and/or any of
its related parties in relation to their respective complaints.
168. As part of Post Office’s Network Transformation programme, certain postmasters
were provided with two options, as follows:
168.1 To convert their branch into a NTC Main or Local branch. If a postmaster
chose this option, then their existing contract with Post Office would be
terminated. In addition to funding equipment and works to update the
postmaster's branch, Post Office made a payment to the postmaster to
support their transition to a Network Transformation Contract, on certain
conditions. These included a condition that the payment was made in full
and final settlement of any and all claims that the postmaster had or may
have against Post Office howsoever arising and whether arising out of
the termination of the existing contract and whether under common law,
contract, statute or otherwise. The level of payments differed depending
on the type of model the postmaster was converting to, but for Local
branches the payments made were up to £60,000. Post Office believes
there are 60 Claimants who fall within this category.
168.2 To leave the Post Office network. If a postmaster chose this option, he
or she was invited to submit their resignation from their contract with Post
Office. If the postmaster's contract was terminated, Post Office would
make a “Leavers Payment’ to the postmaster, on certain conditions,
including a full and final settlement condition as set out above. The
Leaver's Payment was typically in the region of £100,000 but could be up
to £200,000. Post Office believes there are 42 Claimants who fall within
this category.
169. Thus, there are 114 Claimants (22% of the total number of Claimants) who have
already entered into settlement agreements with Post Office.
STATEMENT OF TRUTH
I believe thi
Signed:
Date:
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FREETHS
Bond Dickinson LLP i
DX 38517
Southampton3
Email: james.hartle’
By email: andrew.parsons:
6 July 2017
Our Ref: JXH/1684/2113618/1
Your Ref: AP6/364065.1369
Dear Sirs,
BATES & OTHERS -V- POST OFFICE LTD
Claim No: HQ16X01238
DRAFT ORDER FOR CMC
In advance of the CMC listed for 19 October 2017, we write enclosing proposed directions (see
draft Order attached) as to which we seek your agreement and co-operation.
We also enclose proposed Amended Particulars of Claim, which we invite you to agree, so that the
brief additions to the Particulars of Claim can be pleaded to in your Defence. The Amended
Particulars of Claim simply plead a term implied by the Supply of Goods and Services Act and
make clear that error detection and repellency in the Horizon system is in issue.
There is also the urgent matter of disclosure of the Known Error Log(s), which we address
immediately below.
Known Error Logs
We need the Known Error Logs (and/or similar logs or audit records of bugs, errors or defects).
These are plainly of central relevance to the case and, in particular, the issues which depend on
upon the presence or absence of bugs, errors or defects in the Horizon system. We have been
asking for these documents (and others) since the Letter of Claim dated 28 April 2016. We also
note that extracts from these Logs were referred to during the trial of Seema Misra.
This case obviously involves whether there were such errors, as well as what Post Office knew of
them. There is no basis for not disclosing these documents and, as you are well aware, your
refusal to provide them to date has prevented us from providing any detailed particulars of bugs,
errors or defects in the Particulars of Claim.
Freaths LLP ws a lenited iabity partnership, epistered in England and Wales, partnership number OC304686. Registered Office: Cumberland Cour, 80 Mount Soe, Notingham NG HH
‘Authored and regulated by ta Soictors Regulation Authorly. A ful i of tha members of Freaths LLP is avalaiaforingpacton atthe rgistared ofc,
www.freeths.co.uk
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Please confirm by return that you will now provide these documents. An obviously convenient time
to provide the Known Error Logs (and/or similar) would be with your client's Defence on 18 July
2017. We need to be in a position to give these issues careful consideration well in advance of the
first CMC, and in any event when considering our clients’ Reply.
Draft Order
TRIAL OF PRELIMINARY ISSUE
1. At the CMC the court will consider whether or not to order the trial of any preliminary
issue(s). We have previously suggested to you the resolution of whether the contractual
relationship between the parties amounts to a relational contract may be identified as a
preliminary issue.
2. We consider that whether or not there should be a trial of this or any other preliminary
issue would best be considered after service of your Defence, at which point the parties
will be able see how the issues between them have crystallised, and we will be better
placed to consider the matter and to give some consideration to possible agreed facts.
3. However, if at this stage you have any proposals in relation to trial of any preliminary issue
please let us know.
DISCLOSURE
4. To date there has been considerable correspondence between us regarding disclosure of
documents by Post Office, and we have made repeated requests to which your client has
not acceded. You are well aware of the documents which will be in issue in this case (in
addition to the Known Error Logs above), and the obligations which your client has in
relation to disclosure.
5. You have resisted many of our disclosure requests to date on the basis that “a full
disclosure exercise would be required” to locate relevant documents, but at the CMC after
close of pleadings there can be no doubt that orders for disclosure will be made.
6. Rather than seek standard disclosure of all documents, you will see from the draft Order
that we have proposed disclosure in stages, initially limited to documents relating to the
following matters, which are essential to our understanding of the key generic issues in the
case:
a. the Horizon system architecture (documents which evidence the overarching
systems architecture are obviously essential for our expert to understand the
operation of the Horizon system);
b. bugs, errors or defects in the system which were or may have been the cause of
discrepancies or alleged shortfalls attributed by the Defendant to any of the
Claimants [GPOC §22]
c. the operation of the helpline [§29-30];
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d. the conduct of investigations [§31];
e. Post Office suspense account(s) [§38-39]
7. We suggest disclosure of these generic documents at the first stage as an appropriate and
proportionate way to proceed.
8. If you disagree with our proposal for staged disclosure, please explain why. If you would
prefer to provide standard disclosure, we are prepared to consider with you how that might
best be achieved.
9. We will need to have discussions with you in relation to e-disclosure, which we think would
most naturally follow your response to our proposal above, but if you do wish to set out
your proposals (or initial proposals) in relation to e-disclosure now, then please do so.
10. Proposals for disclosure solely relating to individual Claimants are made below, under
Lead Cases.
LEAD CASES
11. We are intending to issue a further Claim Form later this month, and at that stage we
anticipate there will be total of around 400 - 500 Claimants. Management of the Group will
obviously require selection of Lead Cases. The approach to this process which we suggest
is that the parties initially identify a pool of Claimants in respect of which each party gives
disclosure, from which Lead Claimants may then be selected and managed by the Court.
12. As you will see from the draft Order, we suggest the initial pool be comprised of 20
Claimants identified as potential Lead Cases by each party, giving a pool of 40 Claimants,
which should be more than sufficient to cover the GLO issues. The parties then give
standard disclosure for those cases in the pool.
13. After disclosure, the parties should then co-operate to seek to agree 16 cases from that
pool to be Lead Cases. The court would then be in a position to manage further progress
of the Lead Cases at the next CMC.
14. We invite your agreement to this approach, or any other constructive proposals you may
have.
EXPERT EVIDENCE
15. Expert IT evidence in respect of the operation and accuracy of the Horizon system is
plainly required, and we propose that each party be given permission to adduce expert
evidence in the field of IT accordingly.
16. We think further consideration is necessary as to whether any additional expert evidence is
necessary and if so, in what discipline, however if you have specific proposals in relation to
this issue please let us know.
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17. It is important that our IT expert is able to carry out inspection and testing, and we are
presently in discussions with our expert as to what initial access is required for our expert
to begin work. We will write to you further in due course about this issue. Inevitably our
expert’s views will be informed by disclosure of the generic documents relating to the
system architecture, bugs and errors etc, therefore these discussions will need to be
ongoing.
18. The draft Order accordingly proposes that prior to the next CMC, the parties should co-
operate and seek to agree further directions in relation to these expert issues.
ALTERNATIVE DISPUTE RESOLUTION
19. We repeat our preparedness to seek to resolve or at least narrow the issues by any means
of Alternative Dispute Resolution (including Mediation). We invite your agreement to the
standard direction that we have included in the Draft Order.
CUT OFF DATE
20. We are monitoring the rate of new prospective claimants, and whether any extension to
the cut-off date for claims to be entitled to be entered onto the Group Register may be
required (particularly in circumstances where we were not able to advertise the GLO in the
form approved by the Court prior to it actually being made). For the avoidance of any
doubt, the potential need to extend the cut-off date was expressly envisaged by paragraph
37 of the GLO therefore we do not consider any separate application in relation to
extension of the cut-off date is necessary.
COSTS MANAGEMENT
21. We remind you of the obligation at paragraph 35 of the GLO that 14 days before the CMC
the parties shall serve and file a statement which sets out the costs incurred to date and
the projected estimate of costs to the conclusion of the CMC.
22. As to further costs management, we are giving continued consideration to this issue, but
as you will see from the draft Order, our current proposal is that the parties regularly report
their costs, as they pass particular milestones of £500,000, £750,000, £1 million and any
increment of £250,000 thereafter.
We look forward to hearing from you.
Yours faithfully
bras ue
Freeths LLP
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THE POST OFFICE GROUP LITIGATION
Claim No. HQ16X01238
IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION
BEFORE Mr Justice Fraser
19 October 2017
BETWEEN:
ALAN BATES & OTHERS
Claimants
-and-
POST OFFICE LIMITED
Defendant
Claimants’ draft ORDER
UPON HEARING Leading Counsel for the Claimants and Leading Counsel for the
Defendant
IT IS ORDERED THAT:-
TRIAL OF PRELIMINARY ISSUE
1. [For the parties and the court to consider in the light of the Generic Defence]
LEAD CASES
2. In respect of the selection of Lead Cases: -
a. By [date], the Claimants’ solicitors and the Defendants solicitors’ shall each
select [20] individual claims which will together form the pool of [40]
Claimants from which Lead Cases will be selected.
b. By [date], the parties do provide standard disclosure of documents relating to
the pool of Claimants identified above.
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c. By [date], the parties do seek to agree [16] Lead Cases from the pool of
Claimants aforesaid. Any disagreement on any question of lead case
selection shall be determined at the next CMC.
d. Further directions in relation to Lead Cases to be given at the next CMC.
DISCLOSURE
3. The Defendant do provide standard disclosure in stages, initially limited to
documents relating to the following matters:
a. the Horizon system architecture (documents which evidence the overarching
systems architecture are obviously essential for our expert to understand the
operation of the Horizon system);
b. bugs, errors or defects in the system which were or may have been the
cause of discrepancies or alleged shortfalls attributed by the Defendant to
any of the Claimants [GPOC §22]
c. the operation of the helpline [§29-30];
d. the conduct of investigations [§31];
e. training policies and practices [§64.1, 65];
f. Post Office suspense account(s) [§38-39].
g. documents delivered up by Second Sight following termination by the
Defendant of Second Sight’s contract for services.
4. In respect of the above documents: -
a. The Defendant do provide disclosure thereof by 4pm on [date].
b. By 4pm on [date], the Claimants must make any request to inspect the
original of, or to provide a copy of, any such document.
c. Any such request, unless objected to in writing, must be complied with within
14 days of the request.
d. Disclosure of electronic documents shall be in accordance with the protocols
to be agreed beween the parties.
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EXPERT EVIDENCE
5. Each party has permission to adduce expert evidence of an IT expert in in relation to
the operation and accuracy of the Horizon system (“IT expert evidence”).
6. [Agreement for initial inspection and testing by IT Expert]
7. Prior to the next CMC, the parties shall co-operate and seek to agree further
Directions in relation to expert evidence (including the number and disciplines
thereof, issues which they will address, and any appropriate or necessary tests,
inspections, sampling or investigations).
NEXT CMC
8. There be a further CMC on [date] 2018.
ALTERNATIVE DISPUTE RESOLUTION
9. At all stages the parties must consider settling this litigation by any means of
Alternative Dispute Resolution (including Mediation); any party not engaging in any
such means proposed by another must serve a witness statement giving reasons
within 21 days of that proposal; such witness statement must not be shown to the
trial judge until questions of costs arise.
CUT OFF DATE
10. [To discuss whether the cut-off date for claims to be entitled to be entered onto the
Group Register be should be extended.]
COSTS MANAGEMENT
11. The parties regularly report their costs to each other and to the Court, as they pass
the following milestones: £500,000, £750,000, £1 million and any increment of
£250,000 thereafter.
costs
12. Costs of this CMC be [costs in the case].
13. Costs of the Defendant's Application dated 26 July 2016, reserved by the Consent
Order dated [8 February 2017], be [costs in the case]
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Dated this day of October 2017
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IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE Claim No. HQ16X01238
QUEEN’S BENCH DIVISION
THE POST OFFICE GROUP LITIGATION
BEFORE Mr Justice Fraser
BETWEEN:
ALAN BATES & OTHERS
Claimants
and -
POST OFFICE LIMITED
Defendant
Claimants’ draft ORDER
Freeths LLP
1 Vine Street
Mayfair
London
W1JOAH
DX 37209 Piccadilly
Ref: JLH/2113618/1
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www.bonddickinson.com
41 July 2017 Bond Dickinson LLP
‘Oceana House
39-49 Commercial Road
For the Attention of Mr J Hartley Southemeton
Freeths LLP
Floor 3 GRO :
100 Wellington Street 7 Southampton 3
Leeds andrew parsons
West Yorkshire
LS1 4LT
f:
“ GRM1/AP6/364065. 1369
By email only Your ref:
(SXH/1684/217 1361 8/1/KL
Email: james.hartley_
Dear Sirs
Bates & Others -v- Post Office Limited
Claim Number: HQ16X01238
Claim Form and GPOC amendment
We write further to your letter of 6 July 2017.
As you will appreciate we are currently focused on finalising our client's Defence which is due on 18 July.
We address below the request you have made to amend the Generic Particulars of Claim (GPOC) and
will respond to the other matters in your letter by the end of July.
It is disappointing that you have waited until 12 days before our client's Defence is due to raise
amendments to the GPOC. You have had months to raise these points. These late changes have
prejudiced the preparation of our client's Defence as we are now having to deal with new factual and
legal issues in an extremely short timeframe.
Notwithstanding this prejudicial timing, our client is keen to ensure that Court timetable and the CMC.
listed for October are not delayed. It therefore agrees to the amendments to the GPOC and will
endeavour to file its Generic Defence by the current deadline of 18 July.
We note that there are also a number of other outstanding points which may require amendments to your
clients' Statements of Case. These are set out below. We do not believe that any of these points are
controversial and so it would be beneficial to make all these amendments at the same time so to avoid
the need for multiple rounds of amendments to the Claim Form and / or GPOC and to avoid the costs of
making these amendments separately in the future.
Conspiracy Claim
We refer to the transcript of the GLO Hearing on 26 January 2017.
At paragraph 813 your Counsel confirmed that "what we propose to do is to take conspiracy out of the
GLO issues and we, at the moment, unless we are able to get more information before the date for
serving the finalised generic particulars of claim, ... we intend to remove the conspiracy claim, but on the
express basis that we will be revisiting it in the light of disclosure”.
We note that the conspiracy claim is not pleaded in the GPOC. Please now amend the Claim Form so
that this claim is removed. We also trust that the claim for conspiracy will not be repeated in any future
Claim Forms which are issued.
Bond Dickinson LLP is a limited liability partnership registered in England and Wales under number OC317661. VAT registration number is
GB 123393627. Registered office: 4 More London Riverside, London, SE1 2AU, where a list of members’ names is open to inspection. We use the
term partner to refer to. a member of the LLP. or an employee or consuttant who is of equivalent standing. Bond Dickinson LLP is authorised and
regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority
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Company Claimants
We refer to your letter of 28 February 2017, in which you note there are two individual Claimants
(Saifudin Kutianawala and Vijay Parekh) who operated their branch using a company which contracted
with Post Office under a Franchise Agreement. In that letter you state "their respective companies will be
added as Claimants in due course". We also note from the Schedules of Information that Nahman Nisar
was the director of Deckham Deli Ltd and his company contracted with Post Office.
Having reviewed the Schedules of Information for Mr Kutianawala and Mr Parekh, we note that their
respective companies, FSK Enterprises Ltd and Sons and Daughters Ltd, have both been dissolved and
struck off the register.
To date, these company Claimants have not issued a claim against Post Office. Please confirm whether
you will be adding these companies to the existing Claim Form and removing Mr Kutianawala, Mr Parekh
and Mr Nisar or whether you intend to amend the Claim Form to remove references to company
Claimants.
Please also confirm that in respect of any additional company Claimants that their claims will be brought
in the name of the company.
Deceased Claimants
We refer to your letters of 24 May 2017 and 12 June 2017. In these letters you confirm that you will be
applying to the Court to amend the Claim Form in relation to Ms Enid Mummery and Mr Julian Wilson
who have passed away since the Claim Form was served on 11 April 2016.
Please could you confirm when you expect to be in a position to provide us with the probate
documentation so as Post Office can consider this amendment to the Claim Form.
Discontinued claims
You have previously indicated that four Claimants wish to discontinue their claims and accordingly these
Claimants have not provided Schedules of Information. Please confirm how you intend to do this, as this
may require some form of amendment to the Claim Form.
Please can you provide a draft Consent Order addressing the above matters as appropriate.
Yours faithfully
Bond Dickinson LLP
11
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www.bonddickinson.com
1 September 2017 Bond Dickinson LLP
Oceana House
Second Letter 39-49 Commercial Road
Southampton
S015 1GA
For the Attention of Mr J Hartley
Freeths LLP fs
Floor 3 OX: 38517 Southampton 3
100 Wellington Street
Leeds
West Yorkshire Saree
LS alT APRIAPSI264065 1369
Your ref
JXHI1684/2113618/1 AKL
andrew.parsong
By email only
Email: james.hartley, imogen.randalli
Dear Sirs
The Post Office Group Litigation
Claim Numbers: HQ16X01238 and HQ17X02637
Directions
We refer to your letter of 6 July 2017 regarding the CMC listed for 19 October 2017 and your proposed
directions.
1. General Directions
441 Elements of your proposed directions appear reasonable, but we will not be in a position to
discuss and agree detailed directions until (i) we have sight of all the Schedules of Information
(SOls), the second tranche of which is due on 6 September; (ii) we have reviewed your Generic
Reply, due on 20 September; and (iii) we understand your position on the matters set out in this
letter and our other letter of today's date regarding the SOls.
1.2 It is likely that there are some aspects of this case which are suitable for preliminary
determination and we are also considering whether there are any other questions that could be
addressed at an early stage. We are working on a possible list of preliminary issues with a view
to being able to circulate this as soon as possible after we receive your Generic Reply.
1.3 We can also see that there may be some attractions in your methodology for picking lead
Claimants, but we believe there are major factual differences between the various claims
brought. As such the selection of lead Claimants ought to be selected by reference to the issues
which are chosen for preliminary determination.
14 We doubt that the two strands of disclosure you have proposed — one of which would apply only
to our client — would be appropriate. Quite apart from anything else, the scope of the disclosure
and its proportionality cannot be assessed until the concerns we have about the claim valuation
have been addressed (as addressed at paragraphs 12 to 15 of our letter of today's date on the
SOls) and, in any event, it does not seem to be targeted at any particular objective. Contrary to
how you portray it in your letter, the disclosure suggested just for Post Office is in no way a form
of staged disclosure ~ the categories you set out effectively cover all the factual issues in the
Amended Generic Particulars of Claim (Amended GPOC). However, it may be that your Reply
will help narrow the debate on disclosure and we will wait until we have that document before
exploring this point further.
Bond Dickinson LLP is a limited liability partnership registered in England and Wales under number OC317661. VAT registration number is
GB123303627. Registered office: 4 More London Riverside, London, SE1 2AU, where a list of members’ names ‘s open to inspection. We use the
term partner to refer to a member of the LLP. or art employee or consultant who is of equivalent standing. Bond Dickinson LLP is authorised and
regulated by the Soiicitors Regulation Authority
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1.5
16
24
2.2
3.1
3.2
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Access to the Known Error Log (KEL) can also be considered as part of these wider disclosure
issues. The KEL is a not a document, but a live and proprietary database with approximately
4,000 entries. Since the KEL is a constantly rolling document, the current version in use has
evolved over time and may not reflect the version in place at time which is relevant to the
Claimants' claims. Providing "disclosure" of it is therefore not easy to do and prone to being a
disproportionately expensive exercise if not handled carefully. Addressing whether and, if so,
how your client should have access to the KEL therefore needs to be considered in the context
of any wider directions that are made.
The remainder of this letter is dedicated to a number of issues that we believe should be
addressed immediately, before any further procedures are ordered and preliminary issues
tackled. We hope that these points, or most of them at least, can be resolved through
correspondence before the CMC. If not, appropriate orders will need to be included in the
Court's directions so as to deal with them. Some of these points have been raised with you in
prior correspondence. With a view to ascertaining whether and on what basis any of the issues
will be in dispute at the CMC, we must ask for your full response to the rest of this letter by 15
September 2017.
Un-pleaded generic claims
Both Claim Forms with Claim Numbers HQ16X01238 and HQ17X02637 (the Claim Forms)
assert claims:
2.1.1 under the European Convention of Human Rights and Human Rights Act 1998;
2.1.2 of misfeasance in a public office; and
2.1.3 of unlawful means conspiracy (as previously raised in our letters of 11 and 18 July
2017).
These claims are not pleaded in the Amended GPOC nor addressed in the SOls. Please
confirm that you are discontinuing these claims and that you will by 15 September 2017 amend
the Claim Forms accordingly.
Discontinued claims
In your letters of 20 June 2017 and 14 July 2017, you state that the claims of the following
Claimants are to be discontinued.
3.4.4 Conrad Chau (41)
3.1.2 Usman Kiyani (101)
3.1.3 Mario Lummi (109)
3.14 Dermot Lynch (110)
Please file Notices of Discontinuance for these Claimants by 15 September 2017
Standing to bring claims
Your professional duties require you to have undertaken proper due diligence on your clients
before committing to act on their behalf and that you may only advance claims that are properly
arguable (as referred to in IB (5.7) of the SRA Code of Conduct). We had therefore trusted that,
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4.3
44
4.5
46
47
48
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before bringing any claims on their behalf, you would have established to your satisfaction that
all the Claimants could authorise you to bring these claims and that they were claims the
Claimants could properly bring. In other words, we felt sure that you would have established that
all the Claimants for whom you act (or purport to act) were proper legal entities or persons (as
the case may be) that owned and had standing to bring the claims that are being asserted.
On review of the SO!s, there are several categories of Claimant who do not appear to have
standing to bring claims against Post Office and/or for whom you appear to have no authority to
act. In relation to each category discussed below, please either provide evidence of their
standing to bring a claim or file a Notice of Discontinuance for that Claimant, in each case by 15
September 2017.
Dissolved Companies. We have so far identified one Claimant which is a dissolved company
(Hums Group Ltd - 325). As a dissolved company, it cannot bring legal proceedings. Please
either provide evidence that this Claimant has been restored to the Register or file a Notice of
Discontinuance for it by 15 September 2017.
Companies without claims. From the Group Register, we have identified that 5 Claimants (listed
in Schedule 1 to this letter) are companies that appear to have been incorporated after the date
the Group Register states that they began to operate a branch for Post Office. It therefore
appears that these companies did not exist for a period during which their claims are said to
have arisen and are not therefore proper Claimants. Please either produce evidence explaining
why these Claimants have standing to bring claims or file Notices of Discontinuance for them by
15 September 2017.
Bankrupt Claimants. From the SOls so far provided, we have identified 20 Claimants who have
claimed bankruptcy related losses (listed in Schedule 2 to this letter). We assume that these
Claimants either have been or are bankrupt. If this is the case, prima facie they have no right to
bring legal proceedings pursuing causes of action relating to the period before their bankruptcy.
We are aware that in some cases, trustees in bankruptcy may have assigned claims to the
relevant Claimants. However, we do not know which Claimants have received assignments and
which have not.
By 15 September 2017, please
474 Identify the Claimants who have been made bankrupt or gone into some similar
insolvency process.
AT2 Identify which of those Claimants have had their causes of action against Post Office
assigned to them and provide evidence of the assignments.
47.3 As regards the Claimants for whom there is no evidence of any assignments, please
file Notices of Discontinuance.
Deceased Claimants. From the Group Register and your previous correspondence, we are
aware that 7 claims are brought by personal representatives of an estate and 1 claim has been
brought by a Claimant who has passed away since service of the Claim Form. The Claimants
we have identified in this category so far (which is not an exhaustive list) are listed in Schedule 3
to this letter. In respect of each of these 8 Claimants and any other Claimants in a similar
position whom we have not identified, we ask that by 15 September 2017, you:
4.8.1 provide details of the personal representative of each deceased Claimant (where this is
not stated on the Claim Forms);
48.2 provide copies of the grant of probate or grant of letters of administration, as
appropriate, to demonstrate that all the personal representatives have standing to bring
the respective claims against Post Office; and
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4.8.3 where the claim has not been brought in the name of the personal representative, file
and serve amended Claim Form(s) so to remove the name of the deceased Claimant
and replace it with the name of the personal representative.
5. Untenable claims on their specific facts
5.1 From our review of the SOls so far provided, it appears that there may be cases that, on any
view, are unsustainable. It is in the interests of all parties that unmeritorious cases are removed
from the Group at an early stage so to avoid wasting costs on unnecessary case management,
disclosure and evidence.
5.2 We set out below some examples of such cases. We are highlighting cases of this sort in the
hope that you will either discontinue these claims or explain why you say they are tenable. If you
do not do so, our client will consider whether to make an application to strike them out. We
should be grateful for your prompt engagement on these matters and for a full reply by 15
September 2017 so that these matters may be considered at the CMC as appropriate.
Kamran Ashraf (10) and Siema Kamran (93)
5.3 Your clients Kamran Ashraf and Siema Kamran operated the Hampstead Heath branch between
2001 and 2003. Siema Kamran was th le} aster. According to their SOls, she was
largely absent from the branch andi. amran Ashraf, was her assistant and
operated the branch on her behalf.
5.4
5.5
GRO
5.6 As we understand from the SOls that your client has provided
5.6.2
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5.6.3 Post Office's decision to terminate Mrs Kamran's engagement as subpostmaster was
5.7 In the circumstances, we are aware of no grounds on which a claim by these Claimants can be
sustained against our client. We believe that their claims are an abuse of process, not least
because!, : - _ and that
they have no real prospect of success.
my
5.8 By 15 September 2017, we invite you to discontinue these claims or provide an explanation as to
why you believe they would survive a strike out and/or summary judgment application pursuant
to CPR 3.4(2) and/or 24.2.
Wendy Cousins (47)
5.10 In these circumstances, the conclusions set out in paragraphs 5.6 and 5.7 above would seem to
be applicable to her.
5.11 By 15 September 2017, we invite you to discontinue this claim or provide an explanation as to
why you believe it would survive a strike out and/or summary judgment application.
Lee Castleton (240
5.12 Lee Castleton has recently had his claim added to the Group Action but has not yet served an
SOI. However, his case is known to Post Office, having already been heard by the High Court
under Claim Number HQ05X02706, in which Mr Castleton was found liable for the shortfalls in
his branch and his counterclaim against Post Office was dismissed. After a trial, HHJ Havery
QC found that:
"...the conclusion is inescapable that the Horizon system was working properly in all
material respects, and that the shortfall of £22,963. 34 is real, not illusory."
"I am Satisfied that the substantial unexplained deficiencies incurred in weeks 42 to 51 and
in week 52 up to the close of business on 22nd March 2004 are real deficiencies and as
such are irrefutable evidence that Marine Drive was not properly managed at the material
time. I conclude that [Post Office] was entitled under clause 10 of section 1 to determine Mr.
Castleton's contract summarily for non-performance of his obligation under clause 5 of that
section. Moreover, the losses must have been caused by his own error or that of his
assistants."
5.13 Although we do not yet have details of Mr Castleton's specific claims in the Group Action, the
matters covered in the Amended GPOC directly overlap with the matters covered in the earlier
proceedings. Your client is not permitted to re-open the settled Court judgment on these matters
and Mr Castleton's claim would appear to be res judicata. On this basis, the claim is an abuse
of process and has no prospects of success.
5.14. By 15 September 2017, we invite you to discontinue this claim or provide an explanation as to
why you believe it would survive a strike out and/or summary judgment application.
Margaret Bateman (18) and Michael Rudkin (156)
5.15 The above Claimants are seeking to bring malicious prosecution claims when it appears from
their SOls that Post Office has not brought proceedings (either civil or criminal) against them
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5.16 Margaret Bateman is claiming malicious prosecution but states in her SO} that she "took legal
advice on this and settled the case before proceedings were issued.”
5.17 According to Michael Rudkin's SOI, Post Office brought a prosecution against his wife, not Mr
Rudkin.
5.18 By 15 September 2017, we invite you to resubmit the SOls for these Claimants omitting the
claims for malicious prosecution.
Ralph Oliver (126
5.19 Ralph Oliver is not claiming concealment in his SOI, yet his contract with Post Office was
terminated in August 2008. His claim is time-barred and it would appear that section 32 of the
Limitation Act 1980 is not being relied upon to extend the limitation period.
5.20 By 15 September 2017, we invite you to discontinue this claim or provide an explanation as to
why you believe it would survive a strike out application.
The above is not an exhaustive list but illustrative of the matters that need to be addressed before the
CMC. This is needed so as to enable the parties and the Court to identify those issues which need full
investigation and those which can be disposed with summarily. It is also needed to enable to the Group
Litigation to be managed in a proportionate and efficient manner. We trust that the parties can work ina
co-operative manner so as to limit the issues which require the Court's attention at the CMC.
Yours faithfully
Koad Diccus
Bond Dickinson LLP
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4 September 2017 Bond Dickinson LLP
Oceana House
Sot
For the Attention of Mr J Hartley
Freeths LLP
Floor 3
100 Wellington Street 4
Leeds ;
West Yorkshire
LS1 4LT APGIAP6/364065.1269
Your ref
SKHIN684/21 136184 AKL
By email only
Email: james.hartley imogen.randatt,
Dear Sirs
The Post Office Group Litigation
Response to Request for Further Information
We refer to your Request for Further Information (RF1) dated 31 July 2017, which sought a response by
today.
A draft response to the RFI is currently with our client for approval however, due to the General Counsel!
of Post Office being on jeave until the end of this week, we shail not in a position to provide Post Office's
response by your deadline.
We envisage being in a position to provide the response during the course of next week.
Yours faithfully
reldiasas — Lab
‘ BRonck
Bond Dickinson LLP
Bond Dickinson LLP is a limited liability partnership registered in England and Wales under number OC317661. VAT registration number is
GB123393627. Registered office: 4 More London Riverside, London, SE1 2AU, where a list of members’ names is open to inspaction. We use the
term partner to refer to a member of the LLP. or an employee or consultant who is of equivalent standing. Bond Dickinson LLP is authorised and
regulated by {he Solicitors Regulation Authority
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FREETHS
Andrew Parsons
Bond Dickinson LLP
DX38517 Southampton 3 Celt ones
13 September 2017
Our Ref: JXH/1684/1T106/2/KL
By email only
Dear Sirs
BATES & OTHERS v POST OFFICE LIMITED —- GROUP ACTION
CLAIM NO: HQ16X01238
RFI
We write regarding our RFI sent to you on 28 July 2017, which requested a response by 4
September 2017.
You did not provide your response by that date. Instead, at 6.15pm on that day, we received your
letter, stating that:
“A draft response to the RFI is currently with our client for approval however, due to the
General Counsel of Post Office being on leave until the end of this week, we shall not be ina
position to provide Post Office’s response by your deadline.
We envisage being in a position to provide the response during the course of next week.”
At no time prior to 4 September 2017 did you warn us that there would be any difficulty in meeting
that date. More than a week has now passed and we have not received the Response or any
further communication from you as to when we will receive it.
The date of 4 September 2017 would have afforded us just over two weeks in which to consider
your responses and take them into account in drafting the Reply and Defence to Counterclaim,
which paragraph 32 of the GLO requires to be served on 20 September 2017, one week from
today.
rods LP ia ited Habit parrot, eitredin England ard Wales parteaip number OCSDMEEE, Registered Ofc: Cuban Court, 60 un! Stee Neti NG1 SHH
serised and regulated by te Soicars Regulaton Autry. A Ul lt ofthe members of Freeths LLP Is avalaie fer Inspection a the regisereaoffce
www. freeths.co.uk
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As you know, there are significant requests within our RFI, including clarifying central points in the
case, for example, as regards overarching issue as to the variation in practice, procedure and
operation of Horizon over time and Post Office’s case on key contractual terms.
Please confirm that Post Office will indeed provide its response by 4pm on Friday, 15 September
2017 and agree that the date for service of the Reply to the Defence and Counterclaim be varied to
2 October 2017, in accordance with paragraph 38 of the GLO.
We look forward to hearing from you by return.
Yours faithfully
Dp
hheomse?
Freeths LLP
Please respond by e-mail where possible
rods LP ia ited Habit parrot, eitredin England ard Wales parteaip number OCSDMEEE, Registered Ofc: Cuban Court, 60 un! Stee Neti NG1 SHH
serised and regulated by te Soicars Regulaton Autry. A Ul lt ofthe members of Freeths LLP Is avalaie fer Inspection a the regisereaoffce
www. freeths.co.uk
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www.bonddickinsen.com
13 September 2017 Bond Dickinson LLP
Oceana House
39-49 Commercial Road
‘Southampton
S015 1GA
For the Attention of Mr J Hartley
Freeths LLP
Floor 3
100 Wellington Street
Leeds
West Yorkshire Sunset
LSt 4UT APBIAPE204065.1960
Your tef:
By email only
imogen.randali____ GRO }
Email: james.hartley:
Dear Sirs
The Post Office Group Litigation
Response to the Claimants’ Request for Further information
We refer to your first letter today.
Please find enclosed Post Office's response to the Claimant's Request for Further Information (RFI)
dated 28 July 2017.
As explained in our letter of 1 September 2017, we will not be in a position to discuss and agree
directions until we have reviewed the Reply. These directions are due to be lodged with the Court on 9
October 2017. Your proposed extension of time for the Reply to 2 October 2017 would only allow the
parties a week in which to discuss and then draw up directions. It is important therefore to keep to the
Court ordered timetable. An extension to the Reply deadline should only be considered in exceptional
circumstances given the need te allow time for the parties to discuss case management issues.
You will see in the RF! response that in many places we do not believe that further information was.
required and / or that a proper and / or proportionate request for information was made. We therefore
consider that it should be possible to review the RFI responses and still provide your clients' Reply by the
Court deadline of 20 September 2017. If there are any particular responses that make this not possible,
please let us know and provide specific details of why you cannot provide the Reply on time and why that
would justify delaying preparations for the CMC.
We note that our client has previously had to work within tight deadlines which have been caused by the
Claimants, for instance the Amended Generic Particulars of Claim were provided, without prior warning,
on 6 July 2017 with Post Office's Generic Defence being due 8 working days later. Nevertheless, our
client re-drafted and served its Defence on time. We have made efforts previously to keep to Court
deadlines and would welcome your support in achieving the same now.
Yours faithfully
“Sond MicAmnson Li?
Bond Dickinson LLP
Bond Dickinson LLP is a limited liability partnership registered in England and Wales under number OC317661. VAT registration number is
GB123393627. Registered office: 4 More London Riverside, London, SE1 2AU, where a list of members’ names is open to inspection. We use the
term pariner to refer to a member of the LLP. or an employee or consultant who is of equivalent standing. Bond Dickinson LLP is authorised and
reguiated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority
4A_36887598_4 1
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www.bonddickinson.cam
18 September 2017 Bond Dickinson LLP
Oceana House
38-49 Commercial Road
‘Southampton
$016 1GA
For the Attention of Mr J Hartley
Freeths LLP
Floor 3
100 Wellington Street
Leeds
West Yorkshire
LS1 4LT
Our ref
AP6/AP6/364085.1369
Your ref
By email only
Email: james.hartley:,
Dear Sirs
The Post Office Group Litigation
Claimants’ Reply and Request for Further Information
We refer to your first letter of 15 September 2017.
Proposed extension for the Claimants’ Reply
In our letter of 13 September 2017, we asked that. if you still considered that an extension to the Reply
deadline was required, you identify the RFI responses which created the need for an extension. In
particular, we asked for specific details of why you could not provide the Reply on time and why that
would justify delaying preparations for the CMC. These points have not been addressed. Nor have you
confirmed whether your clients’ contention is that the Reply will be late solely due to the RFI responses
or also because of other reasons (no such reasons having been identified).
The timing of Post Office's response to the Claimants’ proposed directions was brought to your attention
on 1 September 2017. No objection has been raised on this timing until now.
Post Office requires sight of the Claimants’ Reply before it can respond substantively to the Claimants’
proposed directions because (1) a number of the matters in the Amended Generic Particulars of Claim
were reserved for pleading in the Reply (see, e.g., paragraphs 66 and 68); and (2) Post Office is not ina
position to make case management decisions when it does not have full sight of the case being brought
against it. We have made the point in correspondence, in the Defence and in our client's RFI that the
Claimants’ generic case remains vague and unparticularised.
We are also awaiting a response to our letter of 1 September 2017 in relation to the directions which,
depending on the content of your response, may inform a number of matters to be addressed in the
directions.
Despite the above and merely to avoid the wasted time and costs of an application, Post Office is willing
to agree to an extension for the Claimants’ Reply until 12pm on 25 September 2017. This date gives
your clients more time to finalise the Reply but also leaves sufficient time for CMC preparations to be
completed. We believe that this is the latest viable date for the Reply without it causing problems:
« If the Reply is provided by 12pm on 25 September 2017 we will endeavour to write to you by 5pm
on 27 September 2017 with Post Office's response to the Claimants’ proposed directions.
* We propose that your response to these comments is provided by 2 October 2017.
Bond Dickinson LLP is a limited liability partnership registered in England and Wales under number OC317661. VAT registration number is.
GB 123393627. Registered office: 4 More London Riverside, London, SE1 2AU, where a ist of members’ names is open to inspection. We use the
term partner to refer to a member of the LLP, or an employee or consuitant who is of equivalent standing. Bond Dickinson LLP is authorised and
regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority.
4A_36915435_2 22
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. This would allow the parties a week in which to discuss the proposed directions prior to the filing
of these with the Court on 9 October 2017.
Response to the Claimants’ Request for Further Information
We note that you are considering applying to the Court under CPR 18. At present, we do not understand
your clients’ position, bearing in mind the following:
* Your clients’ requests were manifestly excessive and not necessary or proportionate, extending
to 61 questions. There is an obvious contrast with our client's focussed requests for further
information, to which barely any constructive responses were provided.
. You have not addressed the approach taken by Post Office, explained why you disagree with
Post Office's approach or sought to bring a more proportionate set of requests.
. You have not even identified which of Post Office's responses fail, in your clients’ view, to provide
information that is necessary and proportionate to your clients’ understanding of Post Office's
generic case and/or the preparation of their own generic case.
Before making any application to the Court under CPR 18.1, please identify:
1. which responses which you consider to be inadequate and why; and
2. why the additional information being sought is reasonably proportionate and necessary to enable
the Claimants to understand Post Office's generic case and/or prepare their own generic case.
We remind you of the Claimants’ duty of cooperation in this regard.
We note that such explanations were not originally provided alongside the RFI and it is incumbent on
your clients to cooperate in seeking to resolve or at least narrow any disagreement as to the necessity
and proportionality of providing (yet) further information. If you apply to the Court without having
cooperated in this regard, Post Office will respectfully invite the Court to dismiss the Claimants’
application summarily and to award Post Office its costs
Yours faithfully
Bond Dekinsen tp:
Bond Dickinson LLP
23
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Andrew Parsons
Bond Dickinson LLP
DX38517 Southampton 3
Email: james.hartl
19 September 2017
Second Letter
Our Ref: JXH/1684/IT106/2/KL
Dear Sirs
BATES & OTHERS v POST OFFICE LIMITED - GROUP ACTION
CLAIM NO: HQ16X01238
DIRECTIONS
We write in response to your second letter dated 1 September 2017. A number of matters have
now already been addressed by us in other correspondence, as we refer to below.
We adopt the headings in your letter, for ease of reference.
A. General Directions
Overview
We proposed directions to you on 6 July 2017. Your response stating that you “will not be a
position to discuss and agree detailed directions” until you “have sight of all of the Schedules of
Information”, “have reviewed [our] Generic Reply’, and you “understand [our] position on the
matters set out in [your second and third letter of 1 September 2017]” is unreasonable. Our letter
dated 15 September 2017 addresses this point in relation to the Reply and the same position is
true of the other matters you have identified.
The parties have a duty to co-operate, to help the court to further the overriding objective. We
should seek to agree directions to the extent we are able to do so in good time before the CMC.
There are other documents which need to be prepared and agreed before the CMC, and it will aid
the process of identifying the issues which require resolution at the CMC if we agree directions to
the extent possible at an early stage.
Freeths LLP alimted Lally partnership, registered in England and Wales, partersip number OC304688, Registered Office: Cumberland Court, 80 Moun Street, Nottngham NG1 BH
‘Authorised and regulated by te Salctors Regulation Authony. Ata ist ofthe members cf Frees LLP is avaate fr ispecten atthe registered office
www. freeths.co.uk Pree
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Extent of Existing Agreement
Your letter states “Elements of your proposed directions appear reasonable’, but does not identify
any paragraphs or sections of the draft Order as in fact agreed.
Please let us know which paragraphs of the draft Order we sent to you on 6 July 2017 can be
agreed.
Preliminary Issues
In our 6 July 2017 letter we suggested that whether the contractual relationship between the
parties amounts to a relational contract might be a suitable preliminary issue, but that we would
review this issue on receipt of your Defence. (The possibility of this as a preliminary issue was first
mentioned in our Letter of Claim dated 28 April 2016).
We see from paragraphs 103 of your Defence that you deny that the relationship between
Subpostmasters and Post Office is properly characterised as a relational contract, and indeed deny
that if it were to be, that it would affect the construction of effect of the terms of the Subpostmaster
Contract.
As this is an overarching question of law between the parties, which affects all of the
Subpostmaster Claimants, we think it likely that early resolution of this issue would be particularly
valuable. We are open to discussion with you as to whether Franchisees should also be included
in the scope of this issue (noting your position is likewise in relation to those Claimants —
paragraph 119, although this is a much smaller group).
In your 1 September 2017 letter, you did not respond to our proposal to identify this issue as a
preliminary issue. Please now let us know your position regarding a preliminary issue trial on the
question of whether the relationship between Subpostmasters (and, potentially also Franchisees)
and Post Office is as a matter of law a relational contract.
Your letter said that you “are working on a possible list of preliminary issues with a view to being
able to circulate this as soon as possible after we received your Generic Reply”. \f you have
additional potential preliminary issues in mind please provide them to us now. You do not need to
wait for our Generic Reply to do this.
Lead Claimants
Your response on this issue in your 1 September 2017 letter seems to confuse the possibility of a
preliminary issue trial, with the proposals we made in relation to lead cases generally. If there is a
trial of one or more discrete preliminary issues (for example the relational contract point, above),
then of course we don’t propose the comprehensive process of lead case selection currently
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provided for in our draft order (initial identification of 40 cases, disclosure in each of those cases,
then selection of 16 lead cases to proceed). This would not be proportionate. If there is to be a
trial of preliminary issues, then we should ideally seek to do this by reference to agreed facts, but
at most we would expect there to be evidence heard from a small number of claimants (not 16).
Please can you make clear, if there is not a preliminary issue trial, whether you agree the
proposals we have made for lead case selection. It is not helpful to say that ‘there may be some
attractions in our methodology” without identifying what is agreed, not agreed, or what
counterproposals you may have.
Disclosure
We have made sensible proposals for disclosure of documents relating to the key generic issues. It
obviously makes sense for generic documents to be disclosed first, and these are held by your
client. Disclosure by individual claimants will only be required if those claimants are selected as
lead cases.
If you do not agree with our proposals for disclosure, please let us know your counterproposals.
You do not need our Reply or any other information from us in order to do this.
For the avoidance of any doubt, in the same way as lead cases above, our proposals in relation to
disclosure are not intended to be prior to a preliminary issues trial. If there is a preliminary issues
trial, the parties will need to consider appropriate disclosure for that focused purpose to take place
first.
Un-pleaded Generic Claims
Conspiracy
The reference to the GLO Hearing transcript in your 11 July 2017 letter shows that you are well
aware that our counsel was seeking to address your client's professed concerns in relation to
conspiracy as one of the GLO Issues, by removing the reference to it, at that stage. This was
plainly in the wider context that the GLO Issues would later be revisited, as reflected in both
common practice and the GLO itself.
Furthermore, as the passage you quoted in our 11 July 2017 letter makes clear, he also stated that
unless the Claimants were able to obtain more information before the date for serving the finalised
generic particulars of claim, the conspiracy claim, which was in the draft Particulars of Claim, would
be removed. As you are aware, no further information was forthcoming from you in relation to this
issue prior to the date for serving the generic particulars of claim and, therefore, as indicated to the
court, it was removed (and consequently, where was therefore no need to plead to the issue of
conspiracy in your Defence.)
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As for your request for us to remove reference to conspiracy from the present Claim Forms (or
discontinue those claims), it was not our intention to do so prior to disclosure and we had thought
that this was clear from what our counsel said at the hearing.
If your client is minded to apply to strike out the reference to conspiracy in the Claim Form, our
clients would be prepared to agree to amend the Claim Forms as requested in your 11 July 2017
letter. Such agreement would again be on the same express basis as stated at the hearing and
recited above, namely that our clients will revisit that issue following disclosure. For the avoidance
of doubt, the Claimants will rely upon s.32 of the Limitation Act in the event that conspiracy is
thereafter alleged.
Other Claims
Misfeasance in public office and the ECHR claims are both related to the malicious prosecution
claims which it has been agreed should be stayed pending the outcome of the current review by
the Criminal Cases Review Commission (“CCRC”). The same rationale for not pleading these
claims applies as to malicious prosecution, namely that any particularisation in Generic Particulars
of Claim will materially depend on the outcome of the CCRC review and findings on that review will
be likely to inform the pleading in respect of all such cases (see more fully, paragraph 72 of Mr
Harley's second witness statement). We therefore do not agree to discontinue these claims.
B. Discontinued Claims
We have previously informed you of our intention to discontinue 8 claims (see our letters of 20
June and 4 September 2017):
1. Conrad Chau (41)
2. Usman Kiyani (101)
3. Mario Lummi (109)
4. Dermot Lynch (110)
5. HUMS Group Ltd (325)
6. Ling Ma (368)
7. Nalin Patel (418)
8. Potential Estates Limited (429)
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We also confirm we intend to discontinue:
9. Mr Vijay Parkeh (132)
10. Sarah Javed (98)
11. Chelsea News Limited (244)
12. Ravinder Kaur (350)
13. Anil Kumar (358)
We are currently reviewing the position in relation to B Joshi Limited (224). Our intention, as set out
in our letter of 20 June 2017, is to serve these and any further Notices of Discontinuance in relation
to the existing Claimants at the same time. The relevant Notices will be filed well in advance of the
upcoming CMC — there is no reason for you to require these by 15 September 2017. The total
number of claims to be discontinued will be small, relative to the size of the overall group, and we
have made our intentions clear on this issue.
C. Standing to bring claims
Dissolved Companies
We have already informed you, in our letter of 20 June 2017, that the claim of HUMS Group Ltd
(325) will be discontinued.
Companies without claims
As stated above, we are considering the position in relation to B Joshi Limited (224). Save in that
case, we do not agree that these companies do not have claims. These companies contracted
with Post Office and/or Post Office assumed a duty of care to them, in each case giving rise to
claims for loss, for the goodwill of the business or otherwise. It is disproportionate to further
engage in correspondence about these companies which represent a very small subset of the
Claimant cohort.
Bankrupt Claimants
Please see Schedule 1 to this letter in respect of the Claimants you identify in this category. Your
letter is mistaken in assuming all of these claimants have been made bankrupt — as shown in
Schedule 1, in fact many of the bankruptcy-related costs are due to the Claimants entering into
IVAs.
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Of the Claimants who were made bankrupt, as the schedule shows, these claims have all now
been assigned, save in two cases (Ennosel Savio and Keith Jones) where the bankruptcy orders
have been annulled (in relation to Keith Jones, we informed you of this in correspondence on 24
March 2017 and 18 April 2017), and one case where the bankruptcy has just been made and the
process of obtaining an assignment is in hand.
We will write to you under separate cover to provide copies of these assignments.
Deceased Claimants
In two cases, we are making short further enquiries. We will write to you separately to provide
evidence of the standing of each of the personal representatives to bring the claims you have
identified.
D. “Untenable claims on their specific facts”
As it has been necessary to reiterate on multiple occasions, this is a Group Action, the purpose of
which is to: (i) provide access to justice where large numbers of people have been affected by
another’s conduct, but individual loss is so small that it makes an individual action economically
unviable; (ii) provide expeditious, effective and proportionate methods of resolving cases, where
individual damages are large enough to justify individual action but where the number of claimants
and the nature of the issues involved mean that the cases cannot be managed satisfactorily in
accordance with normal procedure; and (iii) achieve a balance between the normal rights of
claimants and defendants, to pursue and defend cases individually, and the interests of a group of
parties to litigate the action as a whole in an effective manner.
We make clear that we do not accept your factual analysis of the individual claims, and it is
immediately obvious that your analysis is flawed in key respects (although we will revisit the
specific case of Mr Oliver's Schedule which may be an error). However, we do not intend to
respond point by point to particular issues about individual claims. The purpose of a Group
Litigation Order is to manage a large number claims efficiently, and the process you invite us to
engage in is entirely contrary to that. For us to respond to claims you identify (notably, “examples”
and “not an exhaustive list’) would be entirely contrary to the intended operation of Part 19.
Conclusion
We look forward to hearing from you constructively in relation to our proposed directions sent on 6
July 2017, as further addressed above.
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Yours faithfully
bobs uP
Freeths LLP
Please respond by e-mail where possible
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Bond Dickinson LLP
DX 38517 Southampton3
Email: james.hariie
19 September 2017
Fourth Letter
Our Ref: JXH/1684/2113618/1/LB
Your Ref AP6/364065.1369
By Email andrew.parsons
Dear Sirs
BATES & OTHERS v POST OFFICE LIMITED — GROUP ACTION
CLAIM NO: HQ16X01238 and HQ17X012637
REPLY & RESPONSES TO CLAIMANTS’ RFI
We write in response to your letter of 18 September 2017.
Proposed Extension for the Claimant's Reply
We informed you that, given the delay with your RFl Responses (by 10 days) we would need a
further 9 days to serve the Reply, namely by 4pm on 29 September 2017. Your agreement to an
extension to 12pm on 25 September 2017 is not sufficient. We will be serving the Reply by 4pm
on 29 September 2017 and, if you do not agree, we will issue an application to extend time
accordingly.
As to your rationale for not agreeing 29 September 2017, it is entirely premised upon your
professed need to have the Reply before you can discuss directions. As we have already
explained, in our letter of 15 September 2017 and our Second Letter of today, there has never
been any justification for your failure to respond substantively to the proposed directions which we
sent you on 6 July 2017. Your position is wholly without merit.
In our Second Letter today, we wrote inviting a response regarding directions, and look forward to
receiving it shortly, so that areas of agreement can be identified and the parties can focus on
seeking to agree other matters, so that the court can at least start from uncontentious proposals
wherever possible. Even if the court ultimately gives directions which differ from those agreed by
the parties, it is obvious that adopting the normal and sensible approach which we suggest is
Freeths LP isa limited liability partnership registered in England and Wales, partnership number OC304688, Registered Office: Cumberland Cour, 0 Mount Street, Nottingham NG' 6HH,
‘Authorised and regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority. fll ist of the memibers of Freths LLP is avallable for inspection atthe registered office
wwwfreeths.co.uk Freeths LLP, Floor 3, 100 Wellington Street, Leeds LS1 4LT DX 310016 Leeds Park Square 31
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helpful to the court and discharges the parties’ duties of co-operation in seeking to achieve the
overriding objective. Please now respond.
Response to the Claimants’ Request for Further Information
There are many respects in which the Response to the RFI is unsatisfactory — including in relation
to material variations in practices over time (addressed below) and refusal to provide obviously
relevant information, including as to the “wide range of reports” (Request 9); the Known Error Logs
(Requests 26 to 29, as to which we also await your response on disclosure); and bugs and errors
resulting in shortfalls (Requests 34 to 36). We will write further regarding these after we have
served the Claimants’ Reply. However, our present focus must be on the Reply. In the
meanwhile, we would invite you to reconsider your responses to the matters which we have initially
highlighted in this letter, pursuant to the duty of co-operation to which you have referred in your
letter. We will of course not make any application without first specifying to you the Requests in
respect of which we would seek an order from the Court.
As to the material variations referred to above, paragraph 4 of the Generic Defence is such that, at
the most basic level, the Claimants have no idea whether the practices, procedures and operation
of Horizon, pleaded in the Generic Defence, have any relevance to most of the Claimants’ cases
and, if they do, in respect of what time period. Many of the Requests in our RFI were directed to
obtaining the necessary information. Our letter enclosing our RFI, dated 31 July 2017, specifically
highlighted this aspect of the RFI and explained why it was important. Your Response to our RFI
of 31 July 2017, provided on 13 September 2017, failed to provide the information.
Our overarching Request was, if Post Office’s practices, procedures and operations had materially
changed over time, to identify those changes in responding to our Request. Post Office refused to
do so on the basis that “It is not for Post Office to speculate as to what changes in its practices and
procedures over time might be considered material to one or more Claimants’ (unparticularised)
allegations of inadequacy” and “... it would be disproportionate and inappropriate for Post Office to
have to plead the detail of all conceivably relevant practices and procedures and changes over a
period of 18 years.”
As you are well aware, our Request was limited to material changes and was asked in the context
of a generic pleading in a Group Action — all in circumstances in which Post Office has pleaded
only to its current practice plus a few selective responses. Your averment that it would be
disproportionate to plead to all changes highlights the potential irrelevance of a pleading which only
addresses current practice and procedures.
The unreasonableness of Post Office’s approach is shown in sharp relief, for example, by the
Responses to Requests 23 and 24, on the central issue as to the operation of Horizon, as follows:-
Paragraph 50(2
Of: “Horizon has robust controls making it extremely unlikely that transaction data input in a
branch would be corrupted when being transferred to, and stored in, Post Office’s data
centre in a manner that would not be detected and remedied”
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23. Is this sub-paragraph pleaded to reflect “the current practices, procedures and
operations” (as suggested by paragraph 4 of the Defence)?
Defendant's Response 23
23: Yes.
24. Please identify the relevant “robust controls” and explain how they operate (identifying
any material changes over time).
Defendant's Response 24
24: Post Office's generic case is sufficiently pleaded at paragraphs 50(2) and 53 of the
Generic Defence. The Claimants do not require the information sought in order to
understand Post Office’s generic case or to plead a Generic Reply. Post Office repeats the
General Response. As to the request to identify all “material changes”, Post Office repeats
the Response on Practices and Procedures.
The pleaded practices, procedures and operation of Horizon are likely to have changed materially
over time. It obviously matters how they have changed.
Although only illustrative, figures provided by Post Office on 26 September 2016, in a response to
an FOI Request, clearly show a changing picture in relation to both net suspensions of
Subpostmasters and prosecutions. The figures appear to show that material changes seem very
likely to have taken place in Post Office’s practices, procedures and the operation of Horizon.
Between 2009/10 and 2012/13, net suspensions ranged between 166 and 131; between 2013/14
and 2015/16, they ranged between 65 and 52. The figures for prosecutions are starker. Between
2010/2011 and 2012/13, they ranged from 31 to 42; between 2013/14 and 2016/17, they ranged
from 2 to 0.
Post Office has made a deliberate choice not to set out, even in outline, how the relevant pleaded
practices, procedures and operation of Horizon have changed over time. So it may be, for all the
Claimants know, that the Reply will be pleading to aspects of practices, procedures and the
operation of Horizon which are not relevant to the issues encountered by the vast majority of
Claimants and the claims which they bring as a result. This is plainly unsatisfactory and appears
evasive.
You clearly appreciate the significance of variations in the factual matrix of particular claims, which
will plainly include the practices, procedures and operation of Horizon, at the relevant time. For
example, in your second letter of 1 September 2017, you accepted that our proposed methodology
for selecting lead claims has “some attractions” and cited the difficulty presented by “major factual
differences between the various claims brought”.
Identifying whether or not the pleaded practices, procedures and operation of Horizon bear any
relationship to most of the claims is obviously relevant, if not fundamental, to the pleading of Post
Office’s case and any Reply. But it is also relevant to the grouping and management of the
Claimant cohort.
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Conclusion
Please now confirm your agreement to service of the Reply by 4pm on 29 September 2017. We
will not be able to meet your earlier date and therefore refusal will make an application necessary.
Please also now confirm that you will now reconsider your Response to the RFI, as we have
invited you to above. It presently appears that an application for an order under CPR 18.1 will be
necessary and we will write to you further, identifying all responses in respect of which an order will
be sought, following service of the Reply.
Yours faithfully
Lie Ul?
eths LLP
Please respond by e-mail where possible
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20 September 2017 Bond Dickinson LLP
Qveana House
39-49 Commercial Road
‘Southampton
S015 1GA
For the Attention of Mr J Hartley
Freeths LLP
Floor 3
100 Weilington Street
Leeds Brent
West Yorkshire O 7
LS1 4LT APSIAPG364065.1369
Your ref:
By email only
Email: james.hartley;__ imogen. randall,
Dear Sirs
The Post Office Group Litigation
Claimants’ Reply and Request for Further information
We refer to your first and fourth letters of 19 September 2017 regarding the timing of your clients!
Generic Reply ("Reply"). In particular, we respond to your request to move the deadline from
Wednesday 20 September to Friday 29 September.
Although this extension might in other contexts appear modest, we remain concerned that it will hinder
the parties’ preparations for the CMC, as it would allow only 6 working days after the Reply is served for
the parties to discuss and seek to agree directions before Monday 9 October, the date by which the
Court has ordered the parties to file draft directions Orders and Skeleton Arguments.
While we intend to make as much progress as we can prior to the receipt of the Reply, there are a
number of matters within the Claimants’ proposed directions that cannot be subject of any detailed
consideration before our client has had an opportunity to take into account the content of the Reply:
1. Preliminary issues. Whether a topic may be suitable as a preliminary issue will depend on the
pleadings. You recognised this in your letter where you say:
“in our 6 July 2017 letter we suggested that whether the contractual relationship between the
parties amounts to a relational contract might be a suitable preliminary issue, but that we would
review this issue on receipt of your Defence" (emphasis added)
Your proposal is to address the “refational contract’ question as a preliminary issue because,
you Say, this will have an effect on the construction of all Post Office's contracts. it is clear
therefore that this question is entwined with each parties’ position on implied terms and
construction. Post Office has pleaded two implied terms and in its Defence responded to the
Claimants’ 20 implied terms as well as a number of related points on the construction of express
terms. We envisage that the Reply will inform Post Office of the Ciaimants' position in respect of
these terms. Until Post Office has sight of the Reply, it does not know which of these terms are
agreed, disputed or no longer sought to be implied, and therefore Post Office cannot know what
issues of construction may sensibly be considered as preliminary issues.
2. Factual disputes. In its Defence, Post Office set out the factual background to the legal
relationship between the parties. Until we see the Reply, we will not know the extent to which
the Claimants agree or dispute this. We cannot therefore make an informed choice on whether
an agreed statement of facts (as you propose) is a viable basis on which to address preliminary
issues or whether and to what extent factual evidence may be needed.
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3. Lead cases, disclosure and expert evidence. Until the scope and utility of preliminary issues
is known, and the extent of any related factual dispute is understood, it is not possible to make a
decision on whether Lead Cases are an appropriate way to proceed. Indeed you acknowledge
this point in your letter:
"If there is a trial of one or more discrete preliminary issues (for example the relational contract
point, above), then of course we don't propose the comprehensive process of lead case
selection currently provided for in our draft order (initial identification of 40 cases, disclosure in
each of those cases, then selection of 16 lead cases to proceed). This would not be
proportionate. If there is to be a trial of preliminary issues, then we should ideally seek to do this
by reference to agreed facts, but at most we would expect there to be evidence heard from a
small number of claimants (not 16)." (emphasis added)
Consequently, we also cannot at this stage provide constructive comment on the need or
proportionality of orders for disclosure or expert evidence.
4. Limitation. Post Office is unable to ascertain whether matters such as limitation and
concealment need to be included within the directions Order until the Claimants position on this
has been pleaded. These matters were not pleaded in the Amended Generic Particulars of
Claim, as your clients’ position on these points was reserved to the Reply.
Despite your assertion that Post Office has taken no steps to progress the directions, our letter of 1
September 2017 addressed a number of matters that could be discussed at the CMC but which did not
require prior sight of the Reply. We have received your response to these matters yesterday (4 days
late) and will be considering them shortly.
For the above reasons, it is not possible to have a constructive dialogue on many issues regarding future
case management (other than those we have raised previously) until the Reply is served. We will of
course make such progress as we can in discussing potential directions before receipt of the Reply,
although we anticipate that the most productive discussions will follow the close of pleadings.
In this context, we remain of the view that no extension of time to serve the Reply is necessary or
appropriate. We note that no specific reasons are given by you as to the need for an extension and, in
particular, the Claimants have not identified why the service of the Response to RFI on 13 September
2017 has caused any unavoidable delay in this regard. Indeed, you have not explained why you need
until 29 September, and not some earlier date, to finalise the Reply.
We do not wish, however, to put any of the parties to the expense of a contested application and have
therefore considered how the disruption caused by the late service of the Reply could be minimised. We
have in mind, in particular, compliance with Directions Order No.1 and effective preparations for the CMC
on Thursday 19 October.
With this in mind, we would ask that you reconsider our previous proposal to extend the Reply deadline
to Monday 25 September, thus allowing the parties two weeks to discuss directions before Skeleton
Arguments and draft Orders are to be lodged on Monday 9 October.
Failing this, if there is to be an extension of time for the service of the Reply to Friday 29 September (as
you are seeking), our view is that this would leave too little time for the parties to seek to reach
agreement on directions. Our client's position is therefore that it will consent to your clients’ application
for an extension of time to Friday 29 September on the condition that you write to the Managing Judge
enclosing this letter and inviting the Court to consent to an agreed variation of paragraph 4 of Directions
Order No.1 extending the time for Skeleton Arguments and draft orders be lodged to Friday 13 October
2017. If the Court approves this, the parties will then have two weeks to discuss directions before filing
documents with the Court.
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Yours faithfully
Bend Dickinsen lfp
Bond Dickinson LLP
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www.bonddickinson.com
4 October 2017 Bond Dickinson LLP
Oceana House
39-49 Commercial Road
For the Attention of Mr J Hartley Southampton
Freeths LLP
Floor 3 Faxi.
100 Wellington Street DX: 38517 Southampton 3
Leeds
West Yorkshire
LS1 4LT
, GRM1/AP6/364065,1369
By email only Your ref:
1FR/1803/212876/V/ER
Email: james.hartley._ 3 imogen.randall,
Dear Sirs
The Post Office Group Litigation
Directions
14 As promised in our Second Letter of 1 September 2017, we write to provide our comments on
Directions following receipt of your Generic Reply on 29 September 2017 (last Friday).
4.2 As a starting point, we note that this litigation covers an extremely broad range of legal and
factual issues that could be tackled in a number of different ways. In this context, we consider
that cooperation between our firms is likely to be more productive than adopting an oppositional
approach. We would vaiue your comments on the proposals below and would be happy to meet
with you to discuss a suitable way forward.
2. Generic Reply
24 The Generic Reply has not provided as much assistance in narrowing or clarifying the issues in
dispute as we had hoped. For example:
2.4.4 The approach taken in the Generic Reply of responding “thematically” to the Generic
Defence makes it difficult to see what your client's case is on many paragraphs of the
Generic Defence. However, we note that a large number of those paragraphs have
not been addressed at all, except by the general denial at paragraph 92.
21.2 In our view, the Generic Reply does not provide a substantive response to large parts
of Post Office's factual case that either cannot sensibly be in dispute or, if they are in
dispute, it is important to know in what respect they are disputed. For example, Post
Office provided at paragraphs 33 to 46 of the Generic Defence a detailed summary of
Horizon and its basic operation. These paragraphs are responded to only selectively in
the Reply, and not under the same heading or in any clear order. As a result, Post
Office cannot tell which parts of its case in this regard are genuinely in dispute.
24.3 The Generic Reply appears to be designed more as a vehicle for argument than as a
means of clarifying and either narrowing or providing more detail as to the issues in
dispute. The Claimants have, for example, chosen to plead that Post Office has made
various admissions that it has in fact not made. For example, paragraph 58.5 of the
Generic Reply alleges that Post Office has made an admission that it has already (by
way of a Response to a Request for Further Information) stated that it does not make
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GB129393627. Registered office: 4 More London Riverside, London, SE1 2AU, where a list of members’ names is open to inspection. We use the
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2.1.4 In several instances, the Generic Reply fails to provide any substantive response to
Post Office’s case on matters that were addressed in detail in the Generic Defence.
For example, paragraph 49 of the Generic Reply asserts, without any particularity, that
the “terms relied upon by the Defendant’ (without distinction) may not be relied upon
as a result of the Unfair Contract Terms Act 1977 (UCTA). The total lack of particulars
is particularly regrettable in circumstances where the Generic Particulars of Claim
(GPoC) indicated that particulars of the Claimants’ case on UCTA would be provided in
the Reply (see paragraph 68 of the GPoC). We find it particularly difficult to see how
the Claimants could seriously contend that all of the express terms on which Post
Office relies are covered by and fail to pass the reasonableness test in UCTA, but even
if this is their contention, they need to set out the grounds on which they make this
contention for each relevant term.
2.1.5 The Generic Reply gives no proper indication of the Claimants’ generic case on the
defences asserted by Post Office in the GPoC, in particular on limitation and the effect
of the settlement agreements they have entered into, being matters which could not be
addressed in the GPoC.
We provide the above by way of example only. We regret to say that, in our view, the Generic
Reply has done little to narrow or clarify the issues in dispute and that this has reduced the utility
of the generic pleadings in furthering the fair and efficient resolution of these proceedings.
This compounds the problems caused by the Schedules of Information (SOls) we have received,
as discussed in our letter dated 1 September 2017. In the circumstances, it is difficult to
exaggerate the difficulties to which the parties will be put in seeking to break the mass of
Claimants down into classes of Claimant whose claims are sufficiently similar to allow Lead
Claimants to be chosen with any confidence. We address this aspect further in paragraphs 4.1,
4.2, 7.1 and 7.2Error! Reference source not found. below.
Summary of Post Office's proposed Directions
Please find enclosed our client's proposed Directions Order, which we summarise below and
address in greater detail at sections 4 to 14 of this letter.
Preliminary Issues, Factual Matrix, Lead Claimants and Disclosure
In the circumstances in which the parties find themselves, Post Office's view is that addressing
the contractual rights and duties between the parties may be an appropriate way to obtain Court
decisions that will assist with the resolution of the majority of cases and create a foundation on
which more informed decisions on future case management can be made. Subject to your views
and those of the Managing Judge, we cautiously suggest the preliminary issues identified in the
draft Directions Order.
Post Office agrees with your proposal to use Lead Claimants and will provide a substantial
amount of early disclosure on these cases in order to speed up progress towards resolving the
factual issues (although, as stated above, the nature and scope of the factual dispute remains
unclear). Post Office does not, however, agree to give disclosure sought in your draft Directions.
Your clients have sought one-sided, overly broad and manifestly disproportionate disclosure on
issues that are not yet the subject of any properly particularised pleading, such that giving
disclosure would be not only vastly expensive but impracticable (because there would be no
properly articulated case against which to apply the test for standard disclosure) and which would
have the effect of dealing the progress of the litigation. As explained below, we have proposed
that more limited categories of disclosure are provided by the Claimants and Post Office.
Post Office is willing to explore using an agreed statement of facts at a preliminary issues trial. It
will be difficult to formulate such an agreed statement, not least because of the absence of any
detailed response to Post Office’s factual case in the Generic Reply. From our experience with
the pleadings we anticipate that there are likely to be substantial disputes around the factual
matrix against which the parties entered into contracts. We therefore propose that a group of
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Lead Claimants is selected and that the Claims of those Lead Claimants are individually pleaded
and used to decide contested points of fact at a preliminary issues trial
Horizon disclosure
3.5 We recognise that in parallel with any preliminary issues you wish to make progress on the
issues relating to Horizon. Our client's proposed Directions stop short of giving permission for
expert evidence because it is not possible at this stage to formulate proper questions to put to an
expert (not least because the Claimants’ case in this regard remains general and speculative:
see, for example, paragraphs 36 to 37 of the Generic Reply). We propose providing your IT
expert with access at Fujitsu's premises in Bracknell to around 4,000 technical documents that
describe the Horizon IT architecture. This is in addition to access to the Known Error Log and
Second Sight, both of which have already been offered / agreed in correspondence. With the
benefit of this information and decisions on preliminary issues, we are hopeful that more informed
decisions can be made about the expert evidence that may be needed in the future.
Further information
3.6 Around 60% of the Claimants are prima facie time-barred and/or have settled their claims. It is
therefore important to address these issues at an early stage as it may significantly change the
dynamic of this Group Litigation if a large number of claims are not able to proceed. Having
reviewed the Reply, we note that this issue may turn on the circumstances of each case. We
therefore propose Directions that further information be given on the positions of those Claimants
affected by these issues.
3.7 It is clear from the generic pleadings that a key issue in this litigation will be how your clients have
accounted for shortfalls in their branches. This point was discussed at the GLO hearing and a
question on it was inserted in the Schedules of Information (SOls). As we have explained in
other correspondence, the SOls do not answer this question adequately or at all. Our Directions
therefore call for more information on this point from all Claimants.
3.8 We have also included orders to require the Claimants to provide more detailed valuations of
their Claims. Post Office’s view is that there are points of principle on quantum that could
usefully be addressed at a preliminary issues trial. This information will assist the Court in
making proportionate case management decisions. It is also necessary for ADR to have any
chance of success, not least because Post Office has no real insight into how the various heads
of claim asserted by the Claimants have been valued but suspects that these have been vastly
over-valued.
3.9 The net result of the above should (i) give the parties clarity on the legal duties between them, (ii)
provide a greater understanding of the technical questions that need to be asked of experts about
Horizon and (iii) allow the proportionality of future case management to be assessed. We believe
this will reduce the costs of disclosure and expert evidence going forward and make it more likely
that this matter can be resolved without the need for a full trial of each Claimant's claim.
3.10 We set out below more detailed commentary on both your and our client's draft Directions.
4. Potential Lead Claimants (para 1 of our client’s proposed Directions Order)
44 We agree with your suggested mechanism for selecting Lead Claimants. However, as already
noted, we are not able to group the Claimants into classes of claims which are sufficiently similar
to each other to enable Lead Claimants to be chosen with any confidence. In these
circumstances, we believe that the Claimants we choose at this point in time can be Potential
Lead Claimants only. We have proposed 40 Potential Lead Claimants but are open to your
thoughts on whether the number should be different. Given that our client does not have a clear
understanding of the ranges of claims that it faces, given the heterogeneity of the Claims and the
large time period encompassed by the GLO, Post Office can see the benefit of having a relatively
large pool of Potential Lead Claimants, at least at this stage.
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We do however reserve the right to call for more or different Lead Claimants in the future. We
have explained in detail in our previous correspondence and our witness evidence for the GLO
that the cases in this litigation are diverse with few common issues. The very poor quality of the
SOls has made the diversity problem worse. The absence of any real clarity and coherence in
the SOls has created a situation in which Post Office still does not know what specific factual
allegations are being advanced by which Claimants and is therefore working in the dark when it
comes to selecting Lead Claimants who could be expected to cover the broad range of claims
made in this case. Without more information about the range of claims there is a serious risk of
selecting Lead Claimants that are not representative of all or even many Claimants. It may well
be that further Lead Claimants will be required in the future depending on the course of this
litigation. We would welcome your comments on this point specifically, as it would be very
regrettable if, after the trial of Lead Claims, it is discovered that the pool of Lead Claimants fails
properly to capture the breadth of the claims our client is in fact facing.
Early Disclosure (paras 2 to 8)
Throughout this litigation, you have made a repeated complaint that your clients are unable to
proceed without further disclosure from our client. We have previously set out the reasons why
we disagree with this, in particular that your clients have day-to-day knowledge of the events
which occurred within their branches and have within their own knowledge the necessary
information to plead their claims.
Our client has also already disclosed numerous documents to you during the course of this
litigation in response to specific requests. It has also disclosed 140 contractual documents. We
pause to note that by contrast, your clients have not disclosed a single document to our client.
The costs to Post Office of providing voluntary disclosure have already been very substantial. We
have indicated previously our client's concern that your firm is using requests for information and
disclosure in preference to obtaining instructions from its clients.
Furthermore, many of your clients have the benefit of disclosure given through the Mediation
Scheme that runs to hundreds if not thousands of documents and the reports prepared by
Second Sight and Post Office into specific cases. You also now have access to Second Sight.
Nevertheless, our client is prepared to provide more early disclosure to assist with the selection
and pleading of Lead Claimants (including for the preliminary issues discussed below). This is
not intended to be a substitute for standard disclosure. Our Directions Order provides for both
parties to search for and disclose certain key categories of documents. We believe that this will
return the greatest number of relevant documents for a proportionate amount of time and cost
and will leave your clients in a good position to plead the cases of selected Lead Claimants. We
should make clear that even this reduced disclosure has substantial cost implications for Post
Office.
To be clear, this is not the standard disclosure on Lead Claimants that you have proposed.
Standard disclosure cannot be given until those cases are pleaded, as otherwise our client will
not know what documents are material to the issues in a particular case and therefore need to be
disclosed. We also note that any order for standard disclosure (even once a case is pleaded)
risks pulling in an extremely wide range of documents. For example, if a Lead Claimant was to
allege inadequate training, this could require a vast amount of disclosure. We describe below the
problems with giving this disclosure.
By contrast with our approach, the disclosure requests in your draft Order are extremely broad,
would likely lead to significant satellite disputes, would be very costly to comply with and take
substantial time to conclude.
Although you label the Order at paragraph 3 of your draft Directions as a form of staged
disclosure, it covers nearly all the material factual issues in this case and relates to nearly all the
points made in section A to the GPoC which sets out the factual background to the claims. This
is not staged disclosure but is tantamount to standard disclosure in terms of the scale and cost of
the task that it foresees. This cannot sensibly be carried out without the benefit of individual
pleadings or even factual pleas at a generic level
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Neither your draft Order nor any of your related correspondence makes clear why you have tried
to select certain categories of documents over other categories, or why these categories might
assist with the resolution of cases, or why all the documents you seek would even be relevant to
the claims your clients have brought.
Determining the scope of the disclosure you are seeking will also be very difficult based on the
GPoC alone, given the very generalised nature of the allegations in the GPoC. The SOls do not
assist in the narrowing the scope of disclosure. We repeat here our client's grave concerns
about the quality of those documents as raised in our Third Letter of 1 September 2017.
In light of the above, there is a high risk that our client would need to give disclosure of all of its
documents on a given subject in order to comply with the very broad and generic disclosure
orders which you propose. This would come at an extremely high cost, take an inordinate
amount of time and come with no assurance that the disclosed documents would actually be
relevant to the cases of any particular Claimant and contribute in any way to the fair and efficient
resolution of these proceedings.
Your request for disclosure of “training policies and practices” is a good example of the problem.
The GPoC says the following about training:
5.11.1. At 64.1 there is an implied term that Post Office was to “provide adequate training and
support (particularly if and when the Defendant imposed new working practices or
systems or require the provision of new services)".
5.11.2 At 92.1 there is an allegation of breach that Post Office failed to provide training in
relation to:
(a) Horizon;
(b) new services;
(c) balancing accounts;
(d) resolving shortfalls;
(e) identifying root causes of losses;
(f) transaction corrections;
(g) Operating Manuals (which we note cover all Post Office operations); and
(h) how postmasters should train their assistants.
5.11.3 We note that paragraph 92.1 is caveated by paragraph 91 as only being "indicative
breaches", so the above list is not exhaustive.
The general and non-exhaustive nature of the GPoC leaves wide open the question of what may
need to be disclosed. The Claimants have not positively asserted which products and
transactions they allege Post Office failed to provide training in respect of. At present, our client
would have no safe basis on which to reach a view because, since specific transaction and
products are not mentioned in the GPoC and no individual case has been pleaded in this regard,
the vague and general allegations in the GPoC would seem to encompass training in relation to
any and all types of transaction (even those that, it seems to us, are unlikely to be the subject of
any allegations by specific Claimants). This may lead to either potentially important disclosure
being missed and the exercise having to be repeated or Post Office spending hundreds of
thousands or even millions of pounds reviewing and disclosing documents that, in the event,
contribute nothing to the resolution of these proceedings.
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If Post Office adopted a very broad approach to ensure that all conceivably responsive
documents are covered by its searches, the combination of the GPoC and the order at paragraph
3e of your Directions could require disclosure of all documents regarding:
5.13.1 all changes to practices, systems, services and products at Post Office that could give
rise to a need to further training over a 17 year period;
5.13.2 all internal decisions made by Post Office on whether or not to provide or update
training in light of the above over a 17 year period;
5.13.3 all training policies, training materials and handouts given to postmasters over a 17
year period;
5.13.4 all guidance for all trainers, the training and qualifications of trainers, internal emails
between trainers and their line management over a 17 year period; and
5.13.5 all practices used by Post Office to roll out training, managing the delivery of training,
and gather feedback on training over a 17 year period.
We remind you in this regard of the huge scale of Post Office's operations. These documents are
not stored in one location and would require searches of multiple servers and hardcopy locations.
We would also need to review the emails of dozens, if not hundreds, of people who have been
involved in training over the last 17 years which may mean retrieving archived records. We will (if
needed) prepare evidence setting out the enormous scale of the task faced by our client if it were
asked to give the disclosure you are seeking.
The above issues with the breadth and imprecision of the disclosure you are seeking apply
equally to paragraphs 3c to 3f in your Order.
In short, we believe that to provide the disclosure required in paragraph 3 of your draft Directions
would cost over £1m and take a minimum of 9 months, and more likely 12 months, to complete.
This is not an effective or proportionate way to proceed. By contrast, we contend that our
proposed approach to disclosure would be a proportionate and appropriate way to move this
litigation forward.
In relation to paragraphs 4(d) and 6(b) of our client's proposed Directions, we are currently
discussing with Fujitsu the best method by which to extract this data from Horizon. Retrieving
this data is a considerable task because it is a labour-intensive process. As a rough guide,
Fujitsu have informed us that it takes a day to retrieve 1 week of data for a branch due, in part, to
the checks that are conducted on the data integrity controls. Side-stepping these controls could
invalidate them with the possibility of creating a situation in which Post Office could no longer
have confidence in the integrity of the data. We expect to be in a position to confirm the timings
for extracting this data by the CMC.
Disclosure by the Claimants is dealt with at paragraphs 5 and 7 of the proposed Directions. We
have sought to limit these categories of documents to disclosure which would be proportionate
and appropriate for the Claimants to provide. However, we do not know how your clients store
their documents and we recognise that a number of these requests are currently drafted in a
broader fashion than those which we have drafted for Post Office (for example, requests 5(d) and
5(g)). We would welcome your proposals on narrowing these categories of documents, taking
into account your knowledge (and the Claimants’ knowledge) as to what documents would in
practice be covered by the categories, where they are likely to be located, etc.
Experts and Horizon (paras 2a and 2b)
As to expert evidence, we believe that it is premature for the Court to give permission for expert
evidence without a clear understanding of the issues to be addressed and / or without being able
to formulate questions to be addressed by experts.
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This difficulty is principally caused by the fact that, putting it in neutral terms, the allegations
regarding Horizon are very general, vague, unclear and (we would say) speculative.
6.2.1 Paragraph 94A of the GPoC is a good example of the problem. The Claimants broadly
assert that Horizon is not fit for purpose, which is stated to include (presumably non-
exhaustively) "error repellency". No particulars are given of the types of errors the
Claimants have in mind or how Horizon should have better "repelled" them. Based on
these very vague pleadings, the Claimants are now calling for significant disclosure
(see paragraphs 3a and 3b of your proposed Directions Order) and expert evidence
6.2.2 Similarly, paragraphs 36, 37 and 40 of the Generic Reply set out extremely general
allegations in relation to Horizon (and, we would contend, at least in part, appear to
proceed on the assumption that the Claimants are not responsible for the shortfalls,
thereby assuming as established what must be proven).
6.2.3 As Claimants, it is for your clients to assert positive and specific claims that Horizon is
defective, not fit for purpose, etc. They should plead and particularise the
circumstances where they have experienced alleged problems with Horizon. For
example, if they wish to allege that Horizon provided insufficient information to
postmasters (para 94 GPoC), is not sufficiently "error-repellent" (para 94A GPoC) or
did not accurate record transactions (para 95 GPoC), then each Claimant could
indicate what the relevant errors were, how and when they were made and how they
should have been “repelled”. No guidance on any of these questions is given, either
the GPoC or the SOls. It is actively unhelpful to simply assert that Horizon failed
properly to effect or record transactions (paragraph 40 of the Generic Reply). There is
no solid foundation on which to identify focused expert issues and evidence.
A further problem with your proposal is that it takes no account of the fact that the parties have
very different positions on the legal duties of Post Office and the Claimants and the relevance of
these duties to the operation of Horizon. The precise formulation of these duties will change
quite considerably the nature of the expert evidence needed. Taking the above example again, if
the Court decides that there is no duty on Post Office to ensure that Horizon is free from defects,
then expert enquiries into "error repellency" may not be needed.
So we can formulate appropriate orders for disclosure and expert evidence around Horizon, we
first need better pleadings on this topic and some preliminary decisions on the legal duties in
relation to it (which are addressed in our list of proposed preliminary issues).
It may be that your clients’ real intention is not to seek permission for expert evidence at this
stage but rather to obtain an order that presses the parties to start the process of gathering
information on Horizon in order to get experts up to speed. If that is the case, our client can see
the sense of this and is willing to cooperate, but we would suggest approaching the matter
slightly differently, as follows:
6.5.1 Our client can provide some early disclosure about Horizon, even in the absence of
any proper pleading in this respect. We would accept that the most sensible first step is
for our client to provide reasonable and proportionate access to basic information
about Horizon. We therefore enclose with the proposed Directions a list of 4
documents that are held by Fujitsu and that, we are informed, Fujitsu believes best
describe the Horizon IT architecture at a high-level. Fujitsu has agreed to provide
copies of these documents.
6.5.2 Our proposed Directions also provide for access by your IT expert to around 4,000
technical documents about Horizon also held by Fujitsu. These technical documents
are held in a content management system and are the current version of each of the
live technical documents for Horizon Online. These documents range from high level
designs to detailed designs of the system and its code, along with documents that
describe hardware that is used in the system.
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6.5.3 These documents are security sensitive and are also the internal know-how of Fujitsu,
which is highly commercially sensitive. Fujitsu has indicated that it will consent to your
expert inspecting these documents at its premises in Bracknell, but it has not agreed to
provide copies, at least at this stage.
6.5.4 In addition to these 4,000 documents, there are approximately 20,000 further
documents held by Fujitsu regarding Horizon in its content management system.
These may be old documents that are no longer used or previous versions of existing
documents, with the version number now up to 36 on some documents. Fujitsu has
suggested that the (approximately) 4,000 documents being offered for inspection are
the best place to start for the experts to understand the Horizon system, since they
describe the system as it stands now. Fujitsu has indicated that it could be willing in
the future to allow your expert to inspect the further documents at its premises in
Bracknell, if a need for to inspect them is explained. This has not been included within
the proposed Directions Order at this stage as the review of the disclosed and
inspected documents will hopefully guide which (if any) of these further documents
your expert will feel that it is necessary to inspect and in relation to which Fujitsu will be
asked to allow access (taking into account its concerns as to confidentiality).
This approach is provided for in paragraphs 2(a) and (b) of our client's proposed Directions
Order. The proposed Order also includes additional protections around the inspection and use of
Fujitsu's confidential and sensitive information. The non-disclosure agreement it refers to will be
(or will be based on) Fujitsu's standard non-disclosure agreement and we will provide a copy in
due course.
We should make it clear that our client is making this proposal in spite of its belief that the
Claimants’ allegations regarding Horizon are speculative. For the avoidance of any doubt, it fully
reserves its right at any time to assert that these allegations have no proper evidential basis, are
not sustainable and do not justify a fishing expedition in the hope that something might turn up.
As a side point, we note that expert evidence may be needed on other issues as well as Horizon,
such as forensic accounting expertise on certain cases. We cannot comment further at this stage
however, given the absence of detailed particulars as to quantum, and our client's position on the
full scope of expert evidence is fully reserved.
Claim Questionnaires (para 9)
To assist with (i) picking Lead Claimants and (ii) those Lead Claimants pleading their cases, our
client is prepared to offer further disclosure, as explained above. As explained in our Second
Letter of 1 September 2017, due to the poor quality of the SOls it will be difficult for our client to
select Preliminary Issue Lead Claimants which are representative of the claims brought by the
group and the preliminary issues proposed below, and impossible to pick any other Lead
Claimants. You have previously refused to rectify the SOls to address our client's concerns. We
would now urge you to make a sensible proposal on what additional information should be
provided by the Claimants to remedy the deficiencies in our client's understanding of the ranges
of claims our clients face and to make it possible to ensure that the Lead Claimants can safely be
said to cover those ranges of claims.
Subject to any proposals you may make, it appears to us that it may be appropriate to adopt a
procedure under which (1) Post Office has liberty to serve a questionnaire on the Claimants, (2)
the Claimants have liberty to apply to raise objections, and (3) failing any application in relation to
any questions, the Claimants will be required to give proper answers to those questions within a
specified period.
We look forward to hearing from you on these points.
Preliminary Issues and Second CMC (paras 10 to 14)
In your Second Letter of 19 September 2017, you proposed that there be a preliminary issue on
whether the contractual relationship between the parties amounts to a "relational contract". You
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make this proposal because, you say, this will have an effect on the construction of all Post
Office's contracts.
As we have said previously, the dispute as to whether or not the contracts can properly be
characterised as “relational” and what, if any, implications this has for the construction of those
contracts is one small part of the dispute as to implied terms and construction. It is an interwoven
part of a much larger dispute. Post Office has pleaded 2 implied terms and in its Defence
responded to the Claimants’ (now more than 20) pleaded implied terms as well as a number of
related points on the construction of express terms. From the Generic Reply, we now know that
the Claimants deny Post Office's implied terms and its construction of (seemingly all) of the key
express terms. Post Office does not agree that it would be useful to select one sub-issue going
to the implication of one of the many terms alleged (an implied term requiring good faith,
transparency, etc.) and determine it in isolation, especially where Post Office has pleaded that
whether or not the contracts are characterised as “relational” will not have any (or any
substantial) effect on the contract and/or the application of the contractual terms to the facts of
the Claims: see paragraph 85 of the Generic Defence.
Given the above, Post Office's position is that, if there is to be the trial of any preliminary issues
regarding the construction and implication of terms, those issues (including any argument you
might wish to advance regarding a "relational contract") should all be dealt with together.
Although we are conscious that this would not be a straightforward process and would have
some disadvantages, we tentatively propose for consideration whether these issues should be
tried as preliminary issues for all the major versions of the contract used for subpostmasters.
This exercise should not however extend to franchisees, directors, guarantors or employees who
are in markedly different positions, both in relation to the terms of their contracts and legal duties
and the factual matrix against which their legal positions will be judged.
Moreover, from our review of the SOls, we believe that there are around:
8.4.1 4 Claimants who were crown employees.
8.4.2 14 Claimants who were franchisees or guarantors of franchisees.
8.4.3 6 Claimants who were directors of companies who were postmasters or franchisees.
These figures are not precise because (i) some of the SOls are unclear on even this basic detail
and (ii) some Claimants had multiple roles (e.g. he or she was an employee who later became a
subpostmaster). In any event, the numbers of these types of Claimants is relatively small, and we
believe it disproportionate to include these Claimants within the preliminary issues.
We set out in Schedule 3 to our draft Directions a list of possible preliminary issues for your
consideration, subject of course to the Managing Judge’s views. We invite your comments.
As noted above, we are happy to explore your idea of an agreed Statement of Facts for this
purpose. However, we anticipate that this would be a slow and difficult process and would leave
many issues outstanding and refer to comments above in paragraph 3.4 on this matter.
You propose to deal with these points of dispute through evidence from a small number of
Claimants. We can see some merit in this proposal. However, any evidence will need to be
preceded by the pleading out of individual cases so as to identify (and, hopefully, narrow) the
factual issues in dispute; in the absence of such pleadings, Post Office will not know on what
factual points evidence is required or even what time periods it should address in its evidence.
We repeat the points made in our previous correspondence and above about the inadequacy of
the GPoC, the Reply and (in particular) the SOls, the result of which inadequacy is that there is
as yet no clear framework on which witness evidence could be built.
We therefore propose that 20 Preliminary Issue Lead Claimants are selected from the 40
Potential Lead Claimants, their claims are pleaded out and then the CMC is restored to allow the
Managing Judge to review the position in the light of the pleadings, to make a final decision as
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whether to proceed with the preliminary issues suggested and, if he sees fit to do so, to give
further directions on evidence.
We believe that having this number of claims pleaded will greatly assist to understand both the
context and practical consequence of any preliminary issues for particular Claims and, more
generally, the application of the outcome of the legal issues to the type of factual allegations that
are advanced. In this regard, the claims of subpostmasters and assistants who have been
convicted may be included in the pool of Lead Claimants for preliminary issues. On the
Claimants’ case, these Claimants will be affected by the determination of the preliminary issues
(or some of them).
Strike out (paras 15 to 18)
As referred to in our letter of 1 September 2017 and your letter of 19 September 2017, there are
a number of other issues that also need addressing at the CMC. We have made provision for
these in our draft Directions Order and describe them briefly below:
9.1.1 Conspiracy claim. Our client requires the abandoned conspiracy claim to be withdrawn
by way of amendment to the Claim Forms. We note your position on s.32 Limitation
Act.
9.4.2 Misfeasance in public office. In your letter of 27 October 2016, you agreed to
discontinue the misfeasance in public office claim having considered the arguments in
our Letter of Response. Those arguments were that Post Office, as a private
company, was not a public office holder. It is irrelevant if this claim is connected to the
malicious prosecutions claims or not; it is bound to fail anyway. Please confirm that
this claim will be withdrawn.
9.1.3 ECHR. Your letter of 19 September 2017 is the first time you have ever said anything
about the nature of the human rights claims. These claims were not discussed at all in
the Letter of Claim or your long substantive letter of 27 October 2016 or pleaded.
Please properly explain the nature of this claim, as at present we have no information
about how this claim is being formulated or why Post Office, as a private company,
could be subject to such a claim. Failing an adequate explanation, we will contend that
this claim should be withdrawn or struck out.
9.1.4 Bankrupt claims. Please confirm that you are not aware of any other Claimants having
been made bankrupt as we requested in our Second Letter of 1 September 2017.
Please also provide evidence of the claim assignment or annulments referred to in the
schedule to your letter of 19 September 2017 by noon on 6 October 2017.
Assuming that there are no other bankrupt claims and the above evidence is provided,
no orders about will be required in the Directions Order.
9.1.5 Deceased Claimants. Please respond substantively on this issue by noon on 6
October 2017.
In relation to your second letter of 20 September 2017, your refusal to engage on specific cases
is counter-productive. It may generate the impression that your clients are trying to hide
particularly weak claims in amongst the group and so swell its ranks. This is wasting costs on
both sides. We also do not agree with your characterisation of the Group Litigation process.
According to the SOls, the values of the manifestly hopeless claims identified in our Second
Letter of 1 September are, except for one claim, all in excess of £100,000. Had these claims
been brought individually, we contend that they would have been the subject of reverse summary
judgment or struck out.
Further, the Group Litigation process does not eliminate the need for your clients ultimately to
prove the merits of each individual case. Although there may be some issues that can be dealt
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with collectively, there are many more that will ultimately turn on the circumstances of individual
cases — as we have been saying since the outset of this matter. It therefore will result in no
saving of costs to indefinitely put off addressing the point that certain of the Claims obviously
have no real prospect of success
We note your point about our firm only providing examples of manifestly hopeless claims. We
therefore propose not addressing this point at this first CMC, but will return to it at the second
CMC described in paragraph 13 below once we have had more time to review all of the SOls and
the further information discussed below and to identify a more comprehensive list of claims that
our client contends should not proceed any further.
Further Information on time-barred claims and settled claims (paras 19 and 20)
Your clients’ Generic Reply fails to address the important issues regarding Claimants who are
potentially time-barred and / or have signed settlement agreements with our client.
Paragraph 69 of the Generic Reply simply denies that the settlement agreements provide our
client with any defence yet does not provide any specific grounds for this. Paragraph 71 does
little more than state the sections of the Limitation Act 1980 on which the Claimants rely. We
note that neither of these matters were addressed directly or in detail in the GPoC, and the
Claimants’ reliance upon $32(1)(c) of the Limitation Act 1980 was not brought to our client's
attention in the Claimants’ pre-action correspondence.
We believe that there are:
10.3.1 At least 192 Claimants whose claims may be time-barred. The standard limitation
period for most of your clients’ claims is no more than 6 years. This would include all
the claims for breach of contract, fiduciary or agency duty and in tort. The limitation
date for these claims is therefore either 11 April 2010, 26 July 2010 or 24 July 2011
depending on which Claim Form a Claimant is named. If one assumes that the last
material action of our client is the termination of a Claimant's contract then this
termination date is likely to be the key date for limitation purposes. Using the
termination dates stated in the Schedules of Information and on the Group Register,
we believe that 192 Claimants were terminated before their respective limitation date,
meaning that their claims may be wholly time-barred.
10.3.2 114 Claimants have entered into settlement agreements with Post Office. These
settlement agreements contain wide releases of claims against Post Office. They
occur in generally two situations:
(a) 12 Claimants settled with Post Office as part of the Mediation Scheme.
(b) From its internal records, Post Office currently believes that 102 Claimants settled
with Post Office as part of either its Network Change or Network Transformation
programmes. In consideration for a payment to leave the Post Office network or
convert their existing branch to a main or local branch, these Claimants waived all
claims against Post Office. Our client is currently in the process of locating the
relevant settlement agreements.
Details of time-barred Claimants can be found at Schedule 6 to the proposed Directions and
details of those who entered into settlement agreements can be found in the enclosed
spreadsheet. Please note that these lists of Claimants are not exhaustive and further information
may come to light in due course that identifies further Claimants as falling into the above
categories.
It is not clear from the Generic Reply whether all Claimants are asserting that they relied on the
same fraudulent representations or concealed fact or mistake that Post Office is said to have
made to or concealed from all postmasters in general, or whether each of them intends to assert
that there were fraudulent representations made to or facts concealed from individual Claimants.
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Our client is therefore left in a position that it does not know the case which is being brought
against it. We would be grateful if you would clarify this point.
If the latter, then our client needs to understand the fraudulent representation or concealed fact(s)
or mistake alleged by each Claimant that are relied on to extend the standard limitation periods
and/or avoid a settlement agreement. Paragraphs 19 to 20 of our proposed Directions provide
orders for your clients to provide further information on this point.
Further Information on Accounting to Post Office (para 21)
As we raised in our Third Letter of 1 September 2017, question 3.2(d) in the SOls was included
by the Master to draw out how your clients have dealt with shortfalls. This is a key issue in this
litigation. The response in your Second Letter of 20 September 2017 is evasive and does not
address the failure to answer this question in the SOls in the majority of cases.
Our proposed Directions therefore call for more information from each Claimant on how they
have accounted for shortfalls. The wording of this request for information mirrors the wording in
the GPoC. In essence, we are calling for each Claimant to clarify which aspects of the generic
claim they are relying on.
Please take this letter and our proposed Order as a request that you provide this information
voluntarily in accordance with Practice Direction 18.
Further Information on Quantum (paras 22 and 23)
In our Third Letter of 1 September 2017, we explained how the SOls failed adequately to value
the claims in breach of the GLO. This means that it is difficult to judge whether directions are
proportionate and will be an impediment to any ADR process.
Our proposed Directions therefore include orders for your client to submit proper claim
valuations. These orders go further than the GLO, in that they call for your clients to provide
more detail as to the value of their personal injury claims and their stigma / reputation loss claims.
We see no reason why your clients should not provide this information. It will assist the parties
because:
12.2.1 Our client's case is that stigma / reputation losses are not recoverable in connection
with many of your heads of claim. This could be a useful question to address as a
preliminary issue. However, to decide whether it worth investing time on this point we
first need to understand how much is being claimed for stigma / reputation loss. We
have not included this issue in the list of preliminary issues at the moment, pending
further quantum information.
12.2.2 Post Office presently considers it implausible that, as the SOls indicate, 67% of the
Claimants can have suffered personal injuries in respect of which compensation could
be recovered. Properly valuing these claims will flush out those Claimants who did and
did not truly suffer a personal injury and so provide a more stable footing on which to
form a realistic estimate of the values of the Claims. We have therefore called for the
personal injury claims to be valued in accordance the Judicial College Guidelines, and
have only required your client to indicate into which bracket a claim falls. You will note
that in the disclosure section of our draft Order we have also sought disclosure of
medical records for each Claimant who is claiming personal injury for a similar reason.
Please take this letter and our proposed order as a request that you provide this information
voluntarily in accordance with Practice Direction 18.
Further CMC (paras 13 and 14)
As you will see in our draft direction, the various strands above can be pulled together at a further
CMC to take place in on the first available date after 3 October 2018. At this second CMC, we
envisage the Court making decisions on:
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13.1.1 the list of preliminary issues (if not agreed or ordered at the first CMC);
13.1.2 directions to a preliminary issues trial; and
13.1.3 possible directions for handling any summary judgment/ strike out applications made
by our client.
Costs
For the sake of avoiding argument at the CMC, our client is prepared to agree to costs in the
case in respect of our client's application in relation to out of time amendments, if your clients will
agree to costs in the case in relation to its recent application for an extension of time for the
Generic Reply. If this point is not agreed, our client intends to seek its costs on its application
and will contend that your client should bear the costs of its application for an extension of time.
We have also included the standard provisions that those Claimants who have served Notices of
Discontinuance shall pay to the Defendant their respective individual costs and an equal
proportion of the common costs up until the date on which their Notice of Discontinuance was
served on the Defendant.
Disclosure Report
We are in receipt of your clients' Disclosure Report served on us today. On the basis that the
Claim Forms include claims for personal injuries, pursuant to CPR 31.5(2) we do not believe that
CPR 31.5(3) applies and there is therefore no need for the parties to file and serve a Disclosure
Report.
Further, in a case of this kind, we do not believe that a Disclosure Report would be of any
practical utility, as your clients' own disclosure report demonstrates.
This letter proposes that the parties give a substantial amount of early disclosure to assist with
the selection and pleading of Lead Claimants but not for the parties to give standard disclosure.
Further, we propose to set out substantial detail as to disclosure, including the sources of
potentially relevant documents, in our evidence for the CMC. We therefore do not consider that,
if required, to file and serve a Disclosure Report serves a useful purpose at this time and we have
not prepared one. However, we consider that the spirit of CPR 31.5 is to encourage dialogue on
disclosure and hope that this letter will be a useful step in such a process.
Next steps
We welcome your comments on our proposed Directions Order by noon on 6 October 2017. We
appreciate that this is asking for a quick response, but the parties only have limited time to
discuss these matters before the Court deadline of 9 October 2017 for filing draft Directions due
to the later provision of the Generic Reply.
If you are really unable to provide a full response by this time, we would ask you to respond to
the specific requests for response in paragraphs 9.1.2 to 9.1.5 above by noon on 6 October 2017
and invite you to respond to the remaining points as soon as possible thereafter.
We do however believe that much time might be saved if the parties were to meet to discuss
these matters rather than exchange correspondence. If you would prefer to meet, please
provide your dates of availability.
Bond Dickinson LLP
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POST OFFICE GROUP LITIGATION Claim No. HQ16X01238
and HQ17X02637
IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION
Before the Honourable Mr. Justice Fraser
Thursday, 19 October 2017
BETWEEN:
ALAN BATES & OTHERS
Claimants
-and—
POST OFFICE LIMITED
Defendant
DEFENDANT'S DRAFT ORDER
UPON the Court holding a Case Management Conference;
AND UPON HEARING Leading Counsel for the Claimants and Leading Counsel for the
Defendant
IT IS ORDERED THAT:
DEFINITIONS
I. Unless otherwise indicated below, this Order uses the same defined terms as are used
in the Group Litigation Order dated 22 March 2017 ("GLO").
Il. "Claim Forms" means the claim forms with claim numbers HQ16X01238 and
HQ17X02637.
Il. Where “brief details” of any sions are required to be given, the required details
are (i) the nature of the act or omission; (ii) when it was done or omitted to be done; (iii)
who did it or omitted to do it; and (iv) where the relevant act is a statement or
representation, misrepresentation, or fraudulent misrepresentation, the further details
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Vv.
VI.
VIL.
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specified in paragraphs TV and (where applicable) V below.
Where “brief details” of any statement or representation (including any advice,
encouragement or pr
ure) are required to be given, the required details are (i) when, by
whom and to whom it was made; (ii) how it was made (orally, in writing or by conduct);
(ii) where it was made orally, the gist of the words used and the individuals by whom and
to whom they were uttered; where it was made in writing, the nature and the date(s) of and
parties to document(s) concerned; where it was made by conduct, details of the acts or
omissions constituting the conduct concerned; and (iv) where it was a false or misleading
statement or misrepresentation, the further details specified in paragraph V below.
Where “brief details” of any false or misleading statement or misrepresentation are to be
given, the required details ate (i) an indication of the respect(s) in which it is alleged to be
false; and (ii) where it was a fraudulent misrepresentation, an indication of the grounds on
which it is alleged that the representor knew that it was false.
"Relevant Branch" means, in respect of each Claimant, the Post Office branch(es) named
in his Schedule of Information during the period such Schedule of Information indicates
he was a Subpostmaster, franchisee, director or guarantor of a Subpostmaster or
franchisee, assistant or Crown employee (as the case may be).
"He" and “his” shall mean “he”/ “she”/ “it” and “his” / “her” / “its” as may be
appropriate to the Claimant in question.
POTENTIAL LEAD CLAIMANTS
By 16 November 2017 [1 month after CMC], the Claimants’ solicitors and the Defendant's
solicitors shall each select 20 Claimants, which will together form a pool of up to 40 lead
claimants from whose claims Lead Cas
es may be selected (the Potential Lead
Claimants). The Potential Lead Claimants shall only include Claimants who are asserting
claims as a Subpostmaster or an assistant (and not Claimants who are asserting claims as a
franchisee, guarantor, director or Crown employee).
EARLY DISCLOSURE
By 14 December 2017 [2 months after CMC], the Defendant shall:
a) Disclose and make available for inspection the documents regarding the Horizon
system architecture listed in Schedule 1 hereto.
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b) Use reasonable endeavours to arrange for the Claimants' IT expert, Jason Coyne, to be
od
given ace
to inspect at the office of Fujitsu in Bracknell any of the documents
in Schedule 2 hereto.
c) Disclose and make available for inspection the following Post Office terms and
conditions:
i. Subpostmaster Contract 1994 issue
ii, Modified Subpostmaster Contract
Community Subpostmaster Contract
iv. ‘Temporary Subpostmaster
v. Local On-site (latest version)
vi. Local Off-site (latest version)
vii. Main On-site (latest version)
viii. Main Off-site (latest version)
ix. Temporary Local Contract (latest version)
x. Temporary Main Contract (latest version)
d) Disclose and make available for inspection the documents delivered up to the
Defendant by Second Sight Support Services Ltd (Second Sight) following the end of
Second Sight’s work in the Post Offi
Complaint Review and Mediation Scheme,
insofar as those documents satisfy the test of standard disclosure in relation to the
c erted in the Generic Statements of Case and relate to a Relevant Branch.
e) Disclose and make available for inspection any settlement agreements between the
Defendant and any Claimant.
By 25 January 2018 [same date as further info on quantum}, each Claimant who asserts a
claim for personal injury in his Schedule of Information shall disclose and make available
for inspection his hospital and GP records on which he intends to rely in support of his
claim, of in the alternative confirm in writing that he is not claiming damages for personal
injury.
Post Office to Subpostmaster. By 25 January 2018, the Defendant shall disclose and make
available for inspection the following documents in relation to each Potential Lead
Claimant who in their Schedule of Information is asserting a claim as a Subpostmaster:
a) Any application to be a Subpostmaster submitted by the Potential Lead Claimant to
the Defendant.
b) Any signed Confirmations of Appointment and/or signed Preface between the
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Defendant and the Potential Lead Claimant.
Records of any
Defendant’s HR database.
stants employed by the Potential Lead Claimant recorded in the
[Transaction and Event data recorded on Horizon for the Potential Lead Claimant’s
Relevant Branch(es).] [As explained further in the letter from Bond Dickinson on 4
October 2017, the provision of this disclosure and wording of this paragraph is subject
to Post Office's ongoing discussions with Fujitsu and the reasonableness and
proportionality of extracting and providing this data.]
Customer Account from POLSAP or Core Finance (as applicable) for the Potential
Lead Claimant’s Relevant Branch(es).
Records of Transaction Corrections issued to the Potential Lead Claimant's Relevant
Branch(es) as recorded in POLSAP.
Written logs of calls to the Defendant's NBSC helpline recorded in either the
Defendant’s Dynamics or Remedy systems (as applicable) as having come from the
Potential Lead Claimant's Relevant Branch(es).
Audit Reports in relation to the Potential Lead Claimant's Relevant Branch(es).
Any suspension letter sent by the Defendant to the Potential Lead Claimant.
Any termination or resignation letter sent between the Defendant and the Potential
Lead Claimant.
Any hardcopy former agent debt file for the Potential Lead Claimant.
Subpostmaster to Post Office. By 25 January 2018, each Potential Lead Claimant who in
their Schedule of Information is asserting a claim as a Subpostmaster shall disclose and
make available for inspection the following documents:
a)
b)
)
i)
Any application to be a Subpostmaster submitted by the Potential Lead Claimant to
the Defendant.
Any signed Confirmations of Appointment and/or signed Preface between the
Defendant and the Potential Lead Claimant.
Any correspondence appointing or terminating the employment of an assistant of the
Potential Lead Claimant.
Any accounting records held by the Potential Lead Claimant showing the payment of a
sum of money to the Defendant in relation to a shortfall in relation to the Lead
Claimant’s Relevant Branch(es).
Any records of any calls from between the Potential Lead Claimant’s Relevant
Branch(es) and the Defendant's NBSC helpline.
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h)
i)
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Any suspension letter sent by the Defendant to the Potential Lead Claimant.
Any termination or resignation letter sent between the Defendant and the Potential
Lead Claimant.
Any letters or communications between the Potential Lead Claimant and the
Defendant regarding the recovery of sum in relation to any shortfall.
Any documents in relation to any loss of earnings or loss of investment or stigma or
reputation damage (if such head of loss has been claimed in a Potential Lead
Claimant's Schedule of Information).
nt. By 25 January 2018, the Defendant shall disclose and make
available for inspection the following documents in relation to each Potential Lead
Claimant who in their Schedule of Information is asserting a claim as an assistant:
a)
)
p
Records in relation to the Potential Lead Claimant recorded in the Defendant's HR
database.
[Transaction and Event data recorded on Horizon for the Potential Lead Claimant's
Relevant Branch(es).] [As explained further in the letter from Bond Dickinson on 4
October 2017, the provision of this disclosure and wording of this paragraph is subject
to Post Office’
's ongoing discussions with Fujitsu and the reasonableness and
proportionality of extracting and providing this data.]
Customer Account from POLSAP or Core Finance (as applicable) for the Potential
Lead Claimant's Relevant Branch(es).
Record of Transaction Corrections issued to the Potential Lead Claimant's Relevant
Branch(es) as recorded in POLSAP.
Written logs of calls to the Defendant's NBSC helpline recorded in either the
Defendant's Dynamics or Remedy systems (as applicable) as having come from the
Potential Lead Claimant's Relevant Branch(es).
Audit Reports in relation to a Potential Lead Claimant's Relevant Branch(es).
Assistant to Post Office. By 25 January 2018, each Potential Lead Claimant who in their
Schedule of Information is asserting a claim as an assistant shall disclose to the Defendant
the following documents:
a)
b)
Any application to be an assistant submitted by the Potential Lead Claimant in relation
to the Potential Lead Claimant's Relevant Branch(es).
Any confirmation of appointment and/or other document recording the Potential
Lead Claimant’s appointment relation to the Potential Lead Claimant's Relevant
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11.
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Branch(es).
Any correspondence between the Potential Lead Claimant and the Subpostmaster(s)
for whom he worked in relation to his appointment and/or termination.
Any records of any calls to the Defendant's NBSC helpline.
Any documents in relation to any loss of earnings or loss of investment or stigma or
reputation damage (if such head of loss has been claimed in a Potential Lead
Claimant's Schedule of Information).
In relation to the disclosure provided for above:
a)
b)
9
The disclosure / inspection provided for in paragraphs 2a) and 2b) above shall be
conditional on the Claimants’ IT expert first entering into a Non-Disclosure
Agreement with Fujitsu.
The disclosure provided for in paragraphs 4 to 7 above shall only be given if and
insofar as it relates to a Relevant Branch (and is thus limited to the period referred to in
paragraph VI above).
The disclosing party shall undertake a reasonable and proportionate search for the
documents to be disclosed.
d) Save as aforesaid, and save for the inspection provided for in paragraph 2b above,
disclosure shall be given by list, with inspection 7 days later, and in accordance with
CPR Part 31.
CLAIM QUESTIONNAIRES
PRELIMINARY ISSUES
Subject to any decision made by the Court as provided for in paragraph 13 below, the
issues set out in Schedule 3 hereto shall be tried as preliminary issues (the Preliminary
Issues).
By 15 February 2018 [3 weeks after disclosure], the Claimants’ solicitors and the
Defendant’s solicitors shall seek to agree 20 Claimants from the pool of Potential Lead
Claimants whose claims shall be Lead Cases for the purposes of the Preliminary Issues
(the PI Lead Claimants). If they fail to agree the PI Lead Claimants by then, the parties
shall have liberty to apply.
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12.
14.
16.
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In respect of the claims brought by the PI Lead Claimants, the PI Lead Claimants and the
Defendant shall serve and file statements of case, as follows:
a) Each PI Lead Claimant shall file and serve his Particulars of Claim by 4:00pm on 12
April 2018. [8 weeks after agreeing PI Lead Claimants]
b) The Defendant shall file and serve its Defence and any Counterclaim to each PI Lead
Claimant's Particulars of Claim by 4:00pm on 7 June 2018. [8 weeks after POC]
c) Each PI Lead Claimant shall file and serve his Reply and Defence to Counterclaim (if
any) by 4:00pm on 2 August 2018. [8 weeks after Defence}
SECOND CMC
By 6 September 2018, [5 weeks after Reply] the Claimants’ solicitors and the Defendant’s
solicitors shall seek to agree:
a) Whether, in the light of the statements of case served and filed in the claims brought
by the PI Lead Claimants, the Preliminary Issues should be tried or the Preliminary
Issues and/or the Lead Claimants should be varied in any way.
b) Further directions for the trial of the Preliminary Issues, including appropriate
directions (if any) as to disclosure or witness statements.
There shall be a Case Management Conference listed for 1 day held on the first available
date after 3 October 2018 to consider the matters described in paragraph 12 and any other
matters as may be appropriate.
STRIKE OUT
The claims for unlawful means conspiracy, misfeasance in a public office and under the
European Convention of Human Rights and Human Rights Act 1998 asserted in the
Claim Forms are struck out and the Claimants shall amend and re-serve their Claim Forms
accordingly by 16 November 2017 [1 month after the CMC].
If and to the extent the Claimants identified in Schedule 4 hereto do not by 14 December
2017 [2 months after CMC] serve on the Defendant the evidence on which they intend to
rely to show that, notwithstanding their bankruptcies, they have standing to bring the
claims they advance in these proceedings, those claims shall be struck out.
C11/6/95
18.
20.
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If and to the extent that the lawfully appointed personal representatives of Enid Mummery
(Claimant No 122) do not by 14 December 2017 [2 months after CMC] serve on the
Defendant an application to be substituted as Claimants along with evidence on which
they intend to rely to identify and support the basis on which they say they have standing
to assert the claims asserted in these proceedings, the claim of Enid Mummery shall be
struck out.
If and to the extent that those Claimants identified in Schedule 5 hereto do not by 14
December 2017 [2 months after CMC] serve on the Defendant evidence on which they
intend to rely to identify and support the basis on which they say they have standing to
assert the claims asserted in these proceedings, they shall be struck out.
FURTHER INFORMATION
Potentially Time-Barred Claims
Each of the Claimants identified in Schedule 6 hereto shall by 25 January 2018 [same time
as disclosure] provide the Defendant with the following information regarding their
reliance on section 32 Limitation Act 1980:
a) brief details of the fraud(s) of the Defendant alleged by the relevant Claimant and
brief details of the fact(s) which the Defendant is alleged to have concealed from the
Claimant;
b) brief details of the act(s) or omission(s) of the Defendant alleged to have concealed
such fact(s) from the Claimant;
©) the grounds on which it is alleged that the Defendant deliberately concealed such
facts from the Claimant; and
d) when and how the Claimant became aware of such fraud(a) and concealed fact(s).
‘This information shall be confirmed by a Statement of Truth from each of the relevant
Claimants.
Potentially Settled Claims
Each of the Claimants for whom a settlement agreement is disclosed pursuant to
paragraph 2c) above shall by 25 January 2018 provide the Defendant with the following
information:
a) whether the Claimant admits that he entered into the settlement agreement disclosed
by the Defendant;
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21.
22.
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b) — whether he admits that such settlement agreement would, unless set aside, prevent
him asserting the claims that h
rts in these proceedings;
c) if the answer to b) is in the negative, the grounds on which he contends that the
settlement would not have that effect;
d) if the answer to b) is in the affirmative, the grounds on which he asserts a right to set
aside the settlement agreement, including (where applicable) brief details of any
fraudulent or other misrepresentation(s) that he alleges was made to him and
induced him to enter into the settlement agreement.
This information shall be confirmed by a Statement of Truth from each of the relevant
Claimants.
Accounting to Post Office
Each Claimant shall by 25 January 2018 inform the Defendant whether he signed off cash
declaration(s) and/or branch trading statement(s) that were not consistent with the stock
and cash held by the Relevant Branch at the relevant time and (ii) any Claimant who signed
off any such cash declaration(s) and/or branch trading statement(s) shall also:
a) identify the incorrect declarations and statements he signed off;
b) state whether he alleges that such incorrect declarations and statements were made:
(1) in reliance on any advice or encouragement from the Defendant;
(2) in reliance on any fraudulent or other misrepresentation(s) by the Defendant;
(3) asa result of any material breach(es) of contract by the Defendant;
(4) asa result of any failure(s) on the part of the Defendant to disclose material
facts which the Defendant ought to have disclosed;
(5) under economic duress; and/or
(6) asa result of unconscionable dealing by the Defendant; and
c) if and to the extent that any of the matters referred to in b) above are alleged,
provide brief details of the alleged acts, omissions and/or frauds, misrepresentations
or statements by the Defendant that are relied upon.
‘This information shall be confirmed by a Statement of Truth from each of the relevant
Claimants.
Quantum
Each Claimant shall by 25 January 2018 [same time as disclosure] provide the Defendant
with his best estimate of the amount of each head of his claim (
luding any claims
11/6/97
24.
a
26.
28.
29.
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for personal injury) based on a methodology that is consistent with the Amended
Generic Particulars of Claim. This information shall be confirmed by a Statement of
Truth from each of the relevant Claimants.
Each Claimant who asserts a claim for personal injury in his Schedule of Information
shall by 25 January 2018 inform the Defendant within which chapter and bracket in the
Judicial College Guidelines their personal injury claim falls. This information shall be
confirmed by a Statement of Truth from each of the relevant Claimants.
ADR
Mt all stages, the parties must consider settling this litigation by any means of Alternative
Dispute Resolution (including Mediation); any party not engaging in any such means
proposed by another must serve a witness statement giving reasons within 21 days of that
proposal; such witness statement must not be shown to the trial judge until questions of
costs arise.
COSTS
The parties shall regularly report their costs to each other and to the Court, as they pass
the following milestones: £500,000, £750,000, £1 million and any increment of £250,000
thereafter.
There shall be no costs budgeting in this case.
The C!
laimants shall pay the Defendant's common costs incurred in relation to the claims
struck out pursuant to paragraph 15 above, in a sum to be assessed if not agreed.
The Claimants listed in Schedule 7 hereto whose claims have been discontinued shall pay
the Defendant's individual cos
s in relation to his Claim and an equal proportionate share
of the Defendant's common costs incurred up to the date on which his Notice of
Discontinuance was served on the Defendant, in a sum to be a:
ed if not agreed.
Any Claimant whose claim is struck out pursuant to paragraphs 16 to 18 above shall pay
the Defendant's individual costs in relation to his Claim and an equal proportionate share
of the Defendant's common costs incurred up to 14 December 2017, in a sum to be
C11/6/98
30.
31.
32.
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assessed if not agreed.
Save as aforesaid, the costs of this CMC are common costs in the case.
The costs of the Defendant's Application dated 26 July 2016, reserved by the Consent
Order dated 14 February 2017, are common costs in the case.
Costs of the Claimants’ Application dated 20 September 2017 for an extension of time for
filing the Generic Reply are common costs in the case.
C11/6/99
1)
3)
4)
SCHEDULE 1
TECHNICAL DOCUMENTS
Horizon Core Audit Process dated 30 January 2014
Horizon Online Data Integrity for Post Office Ltd dated 28 November 2013
Horizon Data Integrity dated 3 December 2013
High level architectural overview of Horizon Online reference document (undated)
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SCHEDULE 2
FURTHER DOCUMENTS
Please refer to E spreadsheet provided by email to Freeths on 4 October 2017
11/6/1041
SCHEDULE 3
PRELIMINARY ISSUES
“AGPoC” refers to the Amended Generic Particulars of Claim; “Defence” refers to
the Generic Defence and Counterclaim; “Reply” refers to the Generic Reply and
Defence to Counterclaim
1. CONTRACTUAL CONSTRUCTION AND RELATED ISSUES
The True Agreement
it Do the express written terms of the following agreements between Post Office
and Subpostmasters represent the “true agreement” between the parties:
1.1.1 the SPMC;
1.1.2 the Temporary SPMC;
1.1.3. the Community Subpostmaster Agreement;
1.1.4 the NTC.
[See AGPoC, paras 50, 69-71; Defence, paras 86, 110-112]
1.2 Tf not, was the “true agreement” between the parties
71?
s alleged at AGPoC, para.
[Denied at Defence, para. 112}.
Onerous or unusual terms
1.3 At AGPoC, para. 66, the Claimants alleges that many terms in the following
contracts are “onerous and unusual” (“the Challenged Terms”).
1.3.1 the SPMC;
1.3.2 the Temporary SPMC;
1.3.3 the Community Subpostmaster Agreement;
1.3.4 the NTC.
Are the Challenged Terms onerous and unreasonable?
[Denied at Defence, para. 108]
14 Was Post Office under any obligation to draw a Subpostmaster’s attention
specifically to the Challenged Terms prior to the Subpostmaster agreeing to his
appointment before those terms became enforceable terms of the contract
between Post Office and that Subpostmaster?
[See AGPoC, para. 66; Defence, para. 108(2)}
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1.6
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If so, what steps was Post Office required to take to draw such terms to the
attention of the Subpostmaster?
[See AGPoC, para. 66; Defence, para. 108(2)]
Were the Challenged ‘Terms unenforceable pursuant to the Unfair Contract
Terms Act 1977?
[See AGPoC, paras. 67-68; Defence, para. 109; Reply, para. 49]
Accounting to Post Office
1.7
What is the correct construction of section 12, clause 12 of the SPMC?
Specifically:
1.7.1 is the Subpostmaster only liable for actual losses caused by the negligence,
carelessness or error of the Subpostmaster, or of his assistants?
1.7.2 are Subpostmasters responsible for all losses disclosed in their branch
accounts save for losses which were neither caused by any negligence, any
carelessness, or any error on their part nor caused by any act or omissions
on the part of their assistants?
1.7.3. must a “loss” within the meaning of the clause be a “teal loss”?
1.7.4 if so, what is a “real loss” and who, if anyone, bears the burden of proof
as regards whether or not any given loss was “real”?
[See AGPoC, para. 55; Defence, paras 93-94]
Does the Subpostmaster bear the burden of proving that any account that he
rendered to Post Office was incorrect?
[Defence, paras 69(3) 183; Reply, paras 64 and 92]
Suspension
1.9
Was Post Office entitled to suspend Subpostmasters appointed pursuant to the
contracts referred to in 1.10 where it suspected that the Subpostmaster and/or
his Assistants had, at or in relation to his branch, (i) committed false accounting
or (ii) acted dishonestly or (iii) otherwise misconducted himself?
[See AGPoC, paras 34-3, 60 and 99; Defence, paras 66-72, 99 and 142; Reply,
para. 92]
Summary termination for false accounting
1.10
Was Post Office entitled summarily to terminate the following contracts (i) for
false unting, (ii) for acting dishonestly, (iii) for other material breach of the
contracts and (iv) for other repudiatory breach of the contracts:
1.10.1 the SPMC;
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1.10.2. the Temporary SPMC;
1.10.3. the Community Subpostmaster Agreement;
1.10.4 the NI'C?
[See AGPoC, paras 34-37, 61 and 99; Defence, paras 66-72, 100 and 142; Reply,
para. 92]
Summary termination for material and repudiatory breach of contract
111
What, if any, restrictions (whether express or implicit) were there on Post
Office’s (i) contractual rights to terminate for material breach of contract by the
Subpostmaster and (ii) common law right to terminate for repudiatory breach of
contract by the Subpostmaster in the following agreements:
1.11.1 the SPMC;
1.11.2 the Temporary SPMC;
1.11.3. the Community Subpostmaster Agreement;
1.11.4 the NTC?
[See AGPoC, paras 61 and 64; Defence, paras 100 and 104-106, Reply, para. 92]
Termination on notice and without cause
1.12
Was Post Office entitled to terminate the following contracts on notice and
without cause or other restriction:
1.12.1. the SPMC;
1.12.2. the Temporary SPMC;
1.12.3. the Community Subpostmaster Agreement;
1.12.4 the NTC?
[See AGPoC, paras 61, Defence, para. 100; Reply, para. 92}
Compensation for loss of office
1.13
Where the following contracts were validly terminated in accordance with their
terms (i.e. termination on notice or without notice for cause), was the
Subpostmaster entitled to any compensation for loss of office or wrongful
termination:
1.13.1 the SPMC;
1.13.2 the Temporary SPMC
1
3 the Community Subpostmaster Agreement;
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1.13.4 the NTC?
[See AGPoC, para. 62; Defence, para. 101; Reply, para. 92]
Under the following contracts, in what, if any, circumstances are Subpostmaster’s
breach of contract claims for loss of business, loss of profit and consequential
losses (including reduced profit from linked retail premises) limited to such losses
as would not have been suffered if Post Office had given the notice of
termination provided for in those contracts:
1.14.1 the SPMC;
1.14.2 the Temporary SPMC;
1.14.3. the Community Subpostmaster Agreement;
1.14.4 the NTC?
[See AGPoC, para. 131; Defence, para. 171; Reply, paras 81-82]
Subsequent appointments
1.15
Were there any restrictions on Post Office’s discretion as to whether or not to
appoint as a Subpostmaster the prospective purchaser of a Subpostmasters’
business in the following contracts and, if so, what were those restrictions:
1.15.1 the SPMC;
1.15.2 the Temporary SPMC;
1.15.3. the Community Subpostmaster Agreement;
1.15.4 the NTC?
[See AGPoC, para. 62; Defence, para 102; Reply, para. 92]
Implied terms
1.16
1.17
Which, if any, of the terms alleged by the Claimants at AGPOC, pata. 64 are to be
implied into the following contracts?
1.16.1 the SPMC;
1.16.2 the Temporary SPMC;
1.16.3. the Community Subpostmaster Agreement;
1.16.4 the NTC?
[Denied at Defence, paras 104-106]
If and to the extent that the terms alleged at AGPoC, paras 64(16), 64(17), 64(18)
and/or 64(19) are to be implied, to what contractual powers, discretions and/or
functions do such terms apply?
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Is the term alleged by the Claimants at Reply, para. 96.1 to be implied into the
contracts referred to in 1.16 above?
Which, if any, of the terms alleged by Post Office at Defence, para. 105, are to be
implied into the contracts referred to in 1.16 above?
[Denied at Reply, para. 92]
Supply of Goods and Services Act 1982
1.20
1.21
Agency
Are any of the following contracts "relevant contracts for the supply of services
for the purposes of the Supply of Goods and Services Act 1982 as regards any
services provided by Post Office to Subpostmasters and, if so, what are the
relevant services so provided:
1.19.1 the SPMC;
1.19.2 the Temporary SPMC;
1.19.3. the Community Subpostmaster Agreement;
1.19.4 the NTC?
[See AGPoC, para. 63A; Defence, para. 104]
Was it an implied term of the contracts that Post Office would carry out services
of supplying Horizon, the Helpline and training/materials with reasonable care
and skill?
[See AGPoC, para. 63A; Defence, para. 104]
Was the legal relationship between Post Office and Subpostmasters under the
following contracts that of principal and agent (where Post Office is the principal
and where the Subpostmasters owed to Post Office the duties alleged at Defence,
para. 91):
1.20.1 the SPMC;
1.20.2 the Temporary SPMC;
1.20.3. the Community Subpostmaster Agreement;
1.20.4 the NTC?
[See AGPoC, para. 53; Defence, paras 90-91; Reply, paras 59-60 I
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2.
Assistants
2.2
2.3
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DUTIES TO ASSISTANTS
Did SPMC section 15, clause 7.1; NTC, Part 2, clauses 2.3 and 2.5 and/or any of
the implied terms contended for by the parties and found by the Court purport to
confer a benefit on Assistants for the purposes of section 1 of the Contracts
(Rights of Third Parties) Act, and if so which of these terms did so?
[See AGPoC, para. 74; Defence, para. 116; Reply, para. 92]
Were Subpostmasters responsible under the following agreements for the training
of their Assistants:
2.3.1 the SPMC;
2.3.2 the ‘Temporary SPMC;
2.3.3. the Community Subpostmaster Agreement;
2.3.4 the NTC?
[See AGPoC, para. 56; Defence, para. 95(4); Reply, para. 92]
C11/6/107
SCHEDULE 4
CLAIMANTS WITH BANKRUPTCIES
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‘Thomas Brown (No. 32)
Donna Marie Lanaghan (No. 359)
Deirdre Connolly (No. 45)
Martin Holgate Legat (No. 362)
Donna Gosney (No. 65)
Deborah Mann (No. 372)
Francis Maye (No.114)
Gordon Martin (No. 374)
Dominic Savio (No. 160)
Jacqueline McDonald (No. 377)
Hughie Noel Thomas (No. 177)
Lewis Lavern McDonald (No. 378)
Elizabeth Barnes (No. 219)
Doreen Anne McQuillam (No. 384)
David Charles Blakey (No. 225)
Senapathy Ponnampalam (No. 395)
Gillian Blakey (No. 226)
Carl Page (No. 410)
Lisa Brennan (No. 229)
Suzanne Lesley Palmer (No. 412)
Lee Castleton (No. 240)
Geoffrey Pound (No. 430)
Chris Dawson (No. 265)
James Richards (No. 440)
Julie Dell (No. 270)
Sandra Richardson (No. 441)
Lesley Dunderdale (No. 275)
Balvinder Singh Gill (No. 473)
Tracey Ann English (No. 282)
Gail Lesley Ward (No. 506)
Richard Andrew Finlow (No.293)
Penelope Jane Williams (No. 511)
Manjit Kaur (No. 348)
James Withers (No. 514)
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SCHEDULE 5
DECEASED CLAIMANTS
Claimant No 75 - Marion Holmes the personal representative of Peter Holmes (deceased)
Claimant No 130 - Wendy Ann Owen the personal representative of John Owen (deceased)
Claimant No 215 - Jasvinder Barang the personal representative of Rajbinder Singh Barang
(deceased)
Claimant No 296 - Menna Garland-Ellis and Jonathan Garland the personal representatives
of Mr Michael Garland (deceased)
Claimant No 477 - Janet Smith the personal representative of David Smith (deceased)
Claimant No 488 - Sonya Sultman the personal representative of David Graham (deceased)
Claimant No 497 - David Thornton the personal representative of Amy Thornton (deceased)
C11/6/109
SCHEDULE 6
POTENTIALLY TIME-BARRED CLAIMS
Claimant Name Number Claimant Name Number
Naushad Abdulla 3 Nirmala Fatania 58
Oyetju Omorara Adedayo I 4 Stanley Fell 59
Nichola Arch 8 Joanne Foulger 60
Kamran Ashraf 10 David John Gilbert 63
Virendra Bajaj 14 Donna Lynn Gosney 65
Tracy Felstead (formerly 16 Josephine Hamilton 69
Banks)
Susan Hazzleton 71
Margaret Bateman 18 -
Allison Henderson 73
Alan Bates 19
Peter John Holloway 74
Arun Bhanote 20
Marion Holmes (personal 75
Revti Raman Bhanote 21 representative for Peter
Holmes)
Ram Pratap Bhardwaj 23
Mrs Elaine Ilidge 81
Janet Bradbury 29
Veronica Dorothy Irvine 83
‘Timothy Brentnall 30
Michael Ernest Jones 89
Thomas George Brown 32
Harish Joshi 90
Wendy Bufirey 34
Parmod Kumar Kalia 92
Sarah Burgess-Boyde 37
- - Siema Kamran 93
Julie Louvain Carter 40
Anish Kavi 94
Ghazala Chishty 42
Antony Afzal Khan 96
Wendy Cousins 47
Amir Hamza Khan 97
Philip Cowan 48
Lorraine Kirkman (nee 100
Scott Darlington 51 Pines)
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Kamaljit Kooner 103 Jasvinder Kaur Uppal 182
Saifudin Kutianawala 106 Guy Vinall 184
Francis Joseph Maye 14 Terrence Walters 185
Katherine McAlerney 115 Graham Ward 186
Seema Misra 119 Tan Warren 187
John Robert Moir 120 Leslie Stephen Whitehead 191
Mrs Jennifer O'Dell 124 Rachel Anne Williams 193
Ralph Oliver (a Protected I 126 Julian Wilson (Deceased) I 195
Party by Terri Packwood,
“ eee” Peter Worstold 196
his Litigation Friend)
Damian Peter Owen 128 David Peter Yates ms
= vashi Ahluwalia 201
Yogesh Jashbhai Patel 136 Urvashi Ahluwalia °
Asam Ramtoola Tae Karina Aitchison 203
Shirley Rayner 146 Tran Alwarey 206
Megan Robinson 155 Janice Sandra Attwood 208
Mohammad Sabir 187 Joan Frances Bailey 210
Mohammed-Azim Saleem I 158 Jasvinder Barang the I 18
personal representative of
Siobhan Sayer 161 Rajbinder Singh Barang
(deceased)
Jarnail Singh 164
Cyril Barnes 218
Septal (Paul) Singh 166
Elizabeth Barnes 219
Gurmit Singh Gill 167
Angela Vadivanbigai 220
Ravinder Pal Singh Gill 168 Bartholomew.
Janet Skinner 169 Sharon Bennett 221
Julie Steward 171 William Betteridge 222
Joy Taylor 176 David Blakey 225
Hughie Noel Thomas 177 Gillina Blakey 226
Pauline Thomson 178 Kenneth Boustead 228
Christopher Trousdale 181
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Lisa Brennan 229 Michael Forgarty 294
Elizabeth Brown 230 Menna Garland-Ellis and 296
- Jonathan Garland the
Julie Byrne 234 personal representatives of
Susan Cain 335 Michael Gatland
Ronald Callaghan 236 John Goodyear 302
Barry Capon 237 Thomas Robert Graham 305
Lynda Care 38 William David Graham 306
Lee Castleton 240 Paul William Hamill 308
Kwok Keung Cheung 245 Jamie Harris 310
Ravinder Chohan 247 Samantha Harrison 311
Nicholas James Clark 248 Jeanette Hendrie 318
Julie Cleife 349 Kevin Hewitt 320
Pauline Anne Coates 251 Micheal Hill 321
Stuart Corbridge 253 Isabella Hyndman. 328
Christine Patricia Cosgrove I 254 Rosalyn Issac 331
Gan Cally 358 Emyr Jones 340
76 Kashmir Kaur-Gill 351
Chris Dawson 265 Mark Francis Brian Kelly 352
Maw Sutha Davanandan 1 306 Mailvaganam Kirupakaran I 356
Julie Dell 0 Donna Marie Langahan 359
Lesley Dunderdale 275 ‘Teresa-Marie Lean 361
Carol Edmondson 279 Pamela Lock 365
Gareth Etherridge 283 Keith Lofthouse 367
Tracey Etherridge 284 Deborah Mann 372
Wendy Evason 287 Gordon Eric Martin 374
Carole Fielding 292 Jacquline McDonald 377
Richard Andrew Finlow 293 Lewis McDonald 378
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C11/6/112
Susan McKnight 383 Madan Mohan Singh 467
Shamim Bano Mir 386 Balvinder Singh Gill 473
Fatima Rafique Mohammed I 389 Gurman Singh-Gill 474,
Kashif Mohammed 390 Trevor Smedley 475
Colin Mustoe 394 Fiona Sood 479
Senapathy Narenthiran 395 Jonathan Sowerby 480
Dawn Paula O'Connell 402 Graham George Stanley 482
Leona Claire O'Donnell 404 John Edward Stephens 483
Aidan O'Dwyer 405 John George Stranger 485
Tain Mackenzie Orr 407 Sonya Sultman 487
Andrew Glenn Owen 408 Sonya Sultman as personal I 488
representative of David
Carl Page 410 Graham Sultman (Deceased)
Suzanne Palmer 412 Thiyagaraja Sumanoharan 489
Jagdish Patel 416 ‘Ann Tasker 493
F Anonymity Order I 420 Margret Thompson 195
422 David James Thornton 497
Geofitey Pound 0 Personal representative of
Amy Margaret Thornton
Victor Price 432 (Deceased)
Sharon Quinn 434 Rita Threlfall 498
Povinder Singh Rai 436 Jill Trueman 499
James Richards 440 John Valentine 503
Sandra Richardson 441 Gail Lesley Ward 506
Marceline Rogan 442 David John Welch 507
Susan Rudkin 444 Paula Winwood 513
Manjit Singh Rukar 445 James Withers 514
Terrance Seeney 457 William Worton 517
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C11/6/113
SCHEDULE 7
DISCONTINUED CLAIMANTS
Conrad Chau (No.41)
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Vijay Parekh (No. 132)
Sarah Javed (No.86)
Usman Kiyani (No. 101)
Mario Lummi (No. 109)
Dermot Lynch (No. 110)
Chelsea News Limited (No. 244)
Anil Kumar (No. 358)
Tums Group Ltd (No. 325)
Ling Ma (No. 368)
Nalin Patel (No. 418)
Potential Estates Limited (No.429)
C11/6/114
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www.bonddickinsan.com
26 April 2017 Bond Dickinson LLP
‘Oceana House
39-49 Commercial Road
For the Attention of Mr J Hartley Sounameen
Freeths LLP
100 Wellington Street Bu
Leeds Dx. SBE17 Sauihampton 3
West Yorkshire
LS1 4LT
By email only Beat ppearseaoce. 148
GRMVAP8/364065. 1369
Your ref
SXH/1684/21 136 1/0KL,
Email: james.hartley”
Dear Sirs
Bates & Others -v- Post Office Limited
Claim number: HX16X01238
Group Register
Thank you for providing us with an updated Group Register on 21 April 2017.
We note that various press releases mention that over 1,000 individuals have registered their interest to
join the Group Action. So as to assist Post Office to understand the claims being brought against it and
to enable the preservation of documents which relate to these additional Claimants, it would be
appreciated if you could confirm whether any new Claim Forms have been issued and whether these
Claimants will be included within the next Group Register.
Also, if you could provide an early indication of likely Claimants before they are added to the Group
Register that would be useful.
The overriding objective seeks to enable the parties to understand the claims which are being brought
against it and ensure that cases are dealt with expeditiously. If the above information could be provided
at an early stage in this claim, this would assist both parties to manage the claim and ensure that its
progression is not delayed.
Yours faithfully
fond Dickinson LLP
Bond Dickinson LLP
Bond Dickinson LLP is a limited liability partnership registered in England and Wales under number 0C317661. VAT registration number is
GB123393627. Registered office: 4 More London Riverside, London, SE1 2AU, where a list of members! names is open to inspection. We use the
term partner to refer to a member of the LLP, or an empioyee or consuitant who is of equivalent standing. Bond Dickinson LLP is authorised and
regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority.
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www.bonddickinson.com
25 May 2017 Bond Dickinson LLP
Oceana House
39-49 Commercial Roac
For the Attention of Mr J Hartley Soi 1a
Freeths LLP
100 Wellington Street
Leeds
West Yorkshire
LS1 4LT
i Jur ref
By email only GRM1/AP6/364065.1369
Your ref:
SH 168402119640KL
Email: james.hartley!, I, imogen.randaif_
Dear Sirs
Bates & Others -v- Post Office Limited
Claim Number: HX16X01238
Over recent months we have exchanged correspondence on a number of satellite matters relevant to the
Group Litigation. Although progress has been made in some areas, we have not reached common
ground in others and we are each now at risk of repeating points made in earlier correspondence. We
have therefore given thought as to how best to proceed from here with these case management issues
and believe that a meeting between our two firms may be more productive in reaching agreement on
these issues than further correspondence.
The following are possible topics that could be discussed at a meeting.
1. Access to Second Sight
The parties agree in principle on your clients being able to speak with Second Sight but the
method of protecting Post Office's privileged material remains open. We have concerns over the
proposal in your recent letter of 5 May 2017 which could be usefully discussed in order to try to
find a mutually acceptable way forward.
2. Access to documents
Post Office has provided contractual documents in respect of the known Claimants. Our request
for the Claimants’ contractual documents remains outstanding, as do a number of the Claimants’
disclosure requests.
3. Details of concealment
Agreement has not yet been reached on whether the date and brief details of each act of
concealment alleged by your clients should be contained within each Schedule of Information.
4. Managing live postmasters
We have corresponded on the issue of how the parties should interact regarding postmasters
who are in post but are also Claimants. This is principally the matters addressed in your second
letter of 11 May 2017, namely (i) the lines of communication between Post Office and current /
prospective Claimants and (ii) whether and when it would be appropriate to stay any enforcement
action against Claimants.
Bond Dickinson LLP is a limited liability partnership registered in England and Wales under number 0C317661. VAT registration number is
GB123393627, Registered office: . where a list of members’ names is open to inspection. We use the term partner to refer to. a member of the LLP. or
an employee or consultant who is of equivaient standing. Bond Dickinson LLP is authorised and regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority.
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We agree that it could be useful to establish some common ground for such interactions. This is
an area where we believe progress could be better made through discussion then by
correspondence.
5 Group register
In the interests of case management, it would be beneficial for Post Office to have early sight of
new potential Claimants and we could therefore discuss whether, and if so how, Post Office may
be provided with details of likely Claimants before they are formally added to the Group Register.
Not providing this information on a regular basis has the potential to impact the management of
the case and, in particular, cause delays.
6. Security for costs
We will write to you shortly to set out our current position in this regard but Security for Costs
remains a live issue.
This list of topics is not exhaustive or mandatory, but it does set out the areas where we believe a face-
to-face dialogue might be useful.
Please confirm if you would be willing to attend a meeting with us in London (on either an open or without
prejudice basis). If you do wish to meet, please provide your dates of availability or we would invite you
to call Andrew Parsons of Bond Dickinson to discuss this matter.
Yours faithfully
Sonel Dictuson (uP
Bond Dickinson LLP
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www. bonddickinson.com
1 September 2017
Oceana House
Third Letter 39-49 Commercial Road
Southampton
$015 1GA
For the Attention of Mr J Hartley
Freeths LLP
Floor 3
100 Wellington Street
Leeds
West Yorkshire Ourceh
ur Fe
LS4 4LT AP6/AP6/364065.1369
Your ref:
(JXH/1684/2113618/1 /KL
By email only
Email: james.hartley, ; imogen.randall
Dear Sirs
The Post Office Group Litigation
Claim Numbers: HQ16X01238 and HQ17X02637
Schedules of Information
141 We write to express our serious concerns about the Schedules of Information (SOls) you
provided on 20 June 2017 and to seek your cooperation in dealing with the problems they are
creating.
1.2 The purpose of the SOls was to provide our client, your clients and the Court with a sufficient
understanding of the nature and features of the claims being brought against our client to enable
effective decisions to be made regarding the management of those claims. The SO!s so far
provided do not achieve this purpose and we fear that this will also be true of the remaining SOls
due to be served by 6 September 2017.
1.3 The SOls provided so far raise many difficulties, including:
1.3.1 A number of them are contradictory, in the sense that they assert claims / give details
which are inconsistent with other claims / details in the same SOI, or which are
inconsistent with the claims / details alleged in your clients’ Amended Generic
Particulars of Claim (Amended GPOC).
1.3.2 imprecise and/or evasive language is used which makes it very difficult and in some
cases impossible to make sense of what is being claimed
1.3.3 In response to many questions in the SOls, no relevant details are provided at all and,
insofar as any details are provided, they are often provided with such brevity that they
are of little or no help in understanding the essential features of the claims asserted.
In this regard, we note that 88 of the original 198 Claimants participated in the
mediation scheme and have therefore had professional advice, a Post Office
investigation report and a Second Sight report on their cases. But even in their SOls,
the details provided are grossly inadequate. Post Office is therefore left not knowing
whether these Claimants are asserting the claims they raised in the mediation scheme
or different claims raising different issues.
Bond Dickinson LLP is a limited liability partnership registered in Engiand and Wales under number OC317661. VAT registration number is
GB123393627. Registered office: 4 More London Riverside, London, SE? 2AU, where a list of members’ names is open to inspection. We use the
term partner to refer to a member of the LLP, or an employee or consultant who is of equivalent standing. Bond Dickinson LLP is authorised and
regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority.
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1.3.4 In many cases, inadequate or no information has been provided on critical issues such
as false accounting, deceit, concealment, harassment, duress or unconscionable
dealing. This is despite the Amended GPOC relying heavily on the concept that Post
Office behaved oppressively; a theme that runs through all your correspondence with
this firm.
1.3.5 It was intended that the SOls would provide Post Office with a fair indication of the
value of most of the Claimants’ claims and thus a fair idea of the total value of their
claims. From the SOls provided, it is not possible to ascertain even approximate claim
values.
We infer from these problems that the SOls may have been produced with little or no input from,
or even review by, your firm. Whether this is the case or not, they are inexcusable. The SOls
are not a mere formality but are important documents and we cannot see how they assist the
Court when they are produced in an evasive, imprecise or inconsistent way. By paragraphs 26
and 27 of the GLO, each Claimant was required to submit an SOI which clearly answered the
questions asked, provided the details specified in Schedule 3 to the GLO and to confirm their
answers and details by a signed Statement of Truth. The primary objective of these requirements
was to make it possible for everyone to understand the nature of the claims being brought, the
essential features of those claims and the amounts being claimed.
The expectation was that, armed with this understanding, the parties and the Court should be
able to organise the claims into classes which can reliably be said to have sufficient similarities
that they can be managed together (e.g. by identifying lead Claimants whose claims are
representative of a relevant class and/or by identifying common issues raised by such claims
which can be disposed of). Further, they should enable the parties and the Court to determine
what directions or procedures would be appropriate for particular claims or issues, having regard
to the amounts which turn on those claims or issues (i.e. the total quantum of the claims which
depend on a particular sort of claim or issue being decided in the relevant Claimants’ favour).
With the SOls so far produced, neither of these things is possible. To its consternation, Post
Office cannot even assess the broad scale of the amounts claimed by the original Claimants.
Nor can it categorise the Claimants into groups. This will hamper both parties’ and the Court's
effort in making effective, proportionate case management decisions.
In order to illustrate these points, we set out below some examples of the problems we have
encountered with the SOls provided, addressed in the order in which the relevant requirements
are imposed in Schedule 3 to the GLO rather than in order of importance. We emphasise that
they are just examples.
Question 1.3
Each Claimant was required to provide details of each branch associated with their claims. For a
number of Claimants the details provided are not consistent with the Group Register. For
example, the SOI of Carol Bains (13) confirms that she is the postmistress at 66-68 Whinney
Lane however, the Group Register additionally includes details of her appointment at the
Featherstone Post Office between October 2012 and November 2016. Post Office therefore
does not know whether Carol Bains is bringing claims against Post Office in relation to one or two
branches.
Asimilar issue can also be seen in the SOls of David John Gilbert (63) and Momonah Khan (98).
This issue will create a problem when it comes to disclosure as Post Office's records are in part
organised by branch and therefore unless Post Office knows which branches are affected and
during which periods, disclosure cannot be given.
The Group Register and SOI must be consistent with each other. This requires either an
amendment to the Group Register or to the SOls.
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Question 1.5
Question 1.5 required the Claimants to identify the contracts on which their claims were based.
For the majority of the Claimants, the SOls are qualified by the wording "pending access to any
contractual document and records that Post Office may hold...". However, back in April 2017,
Post Office disclosed contractual documents for 140 of the original 198 Claimants (it has not
located documents for the other 58). Wording of this sort is wholly inappropriate for Claimants
whose contractual documents have been disclosed.
Further, the contractual documents which Post Office has disclosed do not appear to have been
taken into account in the preparation of the SOls. By way of example:
3.2.1 Paula Gorman (64) recalls in her SO! signing an Acknowledgment of Appointment on
2 March 2011 and Conditions of Appointment on 31 January 2011. In addition to
these, Post Office also disclosed Ms Gorman's termination request letter and Mains
Agreement which were signed on 28 February 2013. No mention of Ms Gorman being
engaged by Post Office on a Mains Agreement is made in her SOI.
3.2.2 Post Office disclosed the following in relation to Sally Grahams (67):
(a) Assigned Acknowledgement of Appointment showing she was engaged on the
Subpostmaster Contract dated 28 May 2010.
(b) A termination letter dated 12 February 2013.
(c) AMains Agreement dated 12 February 2013.
Despite being provided with her contractual documents her SOI states "/ commenced
in 2010 but do not recall signing any contractual documents prior to or at that time. I
believe I entered into a Franchise Agreement on or around 13 March 2013...".
These answers are worrying. You have sent many letters demanding early disclosure from our
client, and in response our client has gone to significant trouble and expense in disclosing
relevant documents. The contractual documents were disclosed 10 weeks before the SOls were
served. However, it appears that, when compiling the SOls, neither you nor your clients even
looked at them.
Questions 1.7 & 1.8
Question 1.7 required the Claimants to state the end date of their engagements. As you know,
this could have an important bearing on limitation, a significant issue in this case. However,
some Claimants have not specified dates, either sufficiently or at all
For example, Dr Saifudin Kutianawala (106) does not state a date on which his appointment at
the Ardwick Branch ended and, while Damian Peter Owen (128) states that his contract was
terminated in "August 2010", his claim may or may not be time-barred depending on whether this
termination was on or after 3 August 2010, 6 years before his claim was deemed issued (as per
the Consent Order dated 14 February 2017).
Further, we note that Claimants Aslam Ramtoola (144), Michael Rudkin (156) and Rachell Anne
Williams (193) state at section 1.7 that their engagement with Post Office has been terminated,
yet also state at question 1.8 that they are currently employed / engaged by Post Office. This is
further evidence of a lack of care in preparing the SOls.
Questions 2.2 & 2.3
These questions were designed to draw out the aspects of the training provided by Post Office
about which a complaint is made. The Claimants were required to provide the date and brief
details of the training which was either inadequate or inappropriate. Three problems have been
encountered with the SOls so far provided.
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5.2 First, in the majority of the SOls, a date for the relevant training has not been provided. Although
we appreciate that Claimants who were engaged with Post Office a long time ago may not be
able to provide exact dates, we would expect even these Claimants to have indicated an
approximate period.
5.3 Second, many of the SOls are lacking any information on the aspects of Post Office's training
alleged to be inadequate. They simply refer in general terms to the training provided. However,
these sections required the Claimants to identify the training that was inadequate. To assert
these claims the Claimants must know and be able to articulate what was inadequate. We note
that your clients will have first-hand knowledge of the training which was provided to them and
the areas on which they felt that the training was inadequate. Therefore, this is not an area
dependent on disclosure from Post Office. Although several Claimants mention that the training
was inadequate, they do not say how it was inadequate.
5.4 Post Office is therefore left not knowing which elements of the training were inadequate or how
this affected the relevant Claimant's ability to operate a branch or follow Post Office procedures.
Examples of this problem can be found in the SOls of Claimants Marion Drydale (55),
Kamaleswaren Kunabalasingam (105) and Mohammad Sabir (157).
5.5 Third, some Claimants have asserted a claim for training in section 7.1(i) but have stated in
sections 2.2 and 2.3 that they felt adequately trained. For example
5.5.1 Bashir Choglay (43) asserts a claim for inadequate training but states "/ felt the training
was intense because there was a lot of information to absorb but I managea”.
5.5.2 Megan Robinson (155) asserts a claim for inadequate training but states "/ felt that
after the training, I was competent and understood how to operate [Horizon]."
5.6 Again, these contradictory answers reflect a lack of care in preparing the SOls. Post Office is left
not knowing what is actually being asserted in relation to training, or even whether a claim is
being asserted at all.
6. Question 2.4
61 Question 2.4 was intended to provide Post Office with information regarding the interactions
which the Claimants had with the helpline, including the date and brief details of any advice given
that is alleged to be inadequate or inappropriate. We note that your clients will have first-hand
knowledge of advice that was provided to them and therefore this is not an area dependent on
disclosure from Post Office.
6.2 The majority of the Claimants’ SOls do not provide the dates on which they allege inadequate /
inappropriate advice was given. They also appear to treat the advice provided by the helpline as
having been given throughout the entirety of a Claimant's engagement rather than on particular
occasions and in relation to particular matters, as would have been the case. This is a critical
omission as without this information Post Office cannot ascertain when the Claimant is claiming
that deficient advice is alleged to have been given by helpline staff, or how the advice is said to
be deficient. Therefore, Post Office cannot understand the case it is being asked to meet.
6.3 Further, when some details are provided they are often vague, with many of the Claimants stating
that the helpline staff were either unhelpful or were of not much use, but no further details of the
specific advice provided (or not) have been given or details of the matter in relation to which
advice was sought.
6.4 Based on the Amended GPOC, we had expected that a portion — for all we know a large portion -
of the deceit claims asserted by the Claimants relate to advice allegedly given by the helpline.
But neither we nor our client have any way of knowing whether this is the case or not. We had
expected that we would be able to identify the statements or advice provided by Post Office that
was alleged to be wrong and thus understand the areas that might be subject to allegations of
deceit. However, the SOls so far provided give few clues as to the basis of any of the Claimants’
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allegations of deceit. They therefore do not assist Post Office to understand the case it is being
asked to meet or enable the parties to identify common issues.
Question 3.1(d)
Question 3.1(d) requires each Claimant to confirm how they accounted for each shortfall (in their
branch) of which they raise a complaint. The purpose of this requirement was to draw from the
Claimants whether they had signed off accounts which included the shortfalls whose existence
they are now seeking to dispute. As can be seen from the Amended GPOC and the Generic
Defence, this is a central issue in this case. For example, it is a major focus of the Claimants’
economic duress claim (as Senior Master Fontaine noted, see paragraph 1440 of the GLO
hearing transcript).
In many of the SOls, the answers provided do not achieve this purpose. Nor are they consistent.
For example:
7.24 The SO! for Amir Khan (97) explains that he settled centrally two shortfalls in August
2007 and November 2007, however his response to (d) is "/ did not know about the
shortfall until was demanded of me". This answer is confusing, in that he claims to
have settled the shortfalls centrally which means he must have signed off the branch
accounts including the shortfalls as they could not have been settled centrally
otherwise.
7.2.2 The SO! for Peter Holloway (74) explains that there was a shortfall of £2,548.09 on 12
November 2007 and that deductions were taken from his "salary" for this sum. In
response to (d) Mr Holloway states "/ received a letter dated 12 November 2007
stating that I had an outstanding debt of £2548.09. It did not explain how the loss was
incurred. As stated above I repaid this sum." His response does not indicate the
treatment of the shortfall in the branch accounts as required. We infer from the fact
that it was deducted from his remuneration that the shortfall would have been included
in the accounts he signed off. But as he does not say so, we cannot be sure that this
is his case
7.2.3 The SO! for Scott Darlington (51) explains that "Shortfall 4" had risen incrementally
over the months since September 2008. In response to (d), Mr Darlington states "/
was suspended on the day of the audit and therefore did not carry out the accounts".
Mr Darlington has not indicated how he treated the shortfalls which arose between
September 2008 and February 2009 (the date of his suspension). We note that Mr
Darlington pleaded guilty to criminal charges of false accounting.
Putting it at its lowest, there appears to be a reluctance on the part of your clients to state
important matters that they are required to state and that are relevant to their own pleaded case.
We note that only 19 Claimants indicate that they submitted incorrect accounts to Post Office
despite there being 29 Claimants who have previously pleaded guilty to false accounting
In some cases, Post Office may not have visibility of shortfalls that have arisen. This would occur
where postmasters make a shortfall good prior to submitting their accounts or where they submit
inaccurate accounts. Quite apart from anything else, the brief details required by section 3.1(d)
require the Claimants to state whether they have made good the shortfall without declaring it to
Post Office; whether the shortfall was declared and settled centrally / made good; or whether
inaccurate accounts were submitted (e.g. the Claimant approved or signed off accounts that were
not, on their face, consistent with the stock and cash held by in their branch).
The fact of whether a Claimant has submitted accounts which include shortfalls that they are now
arguing are either "not real" or did not exist is a critical issue in this case. Whether they have
done so is entirely within their own knowledge and no disclosure or information is needed from
Post Office on this point; Post Office having relied on the accounts submitted by the Claimants.
Your clients are required to state the position, confirmed by a Statement Truth. There can be no
excuse for their refusal to do so.
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Question 4.2
The Claimants’ responses to question 4.2 should confirm with a "yes/no" whether there was an
investigation undertaken by Post Office and, if yes, then the Claimants are required to give the
date and brief details of any investigations in relation to which they raise a complaint.
The majority of the SOls do not provide a yes/no answer but state that they have not seen any
evidence of an adequate investigation. This is not an answer to the question. If a Claimant
believes that no investigation was carried out then the response to section 4.2 should simply be
no”.
This is key question since if no investigation was carried out by Post Office then it follows that
there cannot have been any deceit or misrepresentation made during an investigation for the
Claimant to rely upon. Nor could any duress have been applied, harassment have occurred or
unconscionable dealing undertaken during the course of an investigation.
If it is the Claimants’ case that an investigation gave rise to claims of this nature then details of
that investigation (including what was said, by whom, when and in what context) should be
provided in the SOI. The Claimants must assert a positive case. Again, these are matters that
will be in their own knowledge as they must have experienced these matters in order to sustain
claims for deceit, duress, unconscionable dealing and / or harassment.
Question 5.5
Section 5.5 of the SOI relates to the notice provided by Post Office. It required a simple answer
of "yes/no" and, if yes, then a statement of the period of notice given. However, a number of the
Claimants have provided either confusing or inconsistent responses, for example:
9.1.1 Michael Rudkin (156) has stated in his SOI that "/ was not given proper notice. I was
suspended, then reinstated, then suspended again, at which point I appealed, and I was
then terminated." This response clearly does not provide the details which were
required since it neither provides a yes/no answer nor the period of notice which was.
given.
9.1.2 Christopher Trousdale (181) states in his SOI that his contract was immediately
terminated by Post Office but then continues in section 5.5 to claim that Post Office gave
notice:
It would seem that these responses have not been vetted by any lawyer
Question 5.6
This question was aimed at Claimants who resigned and asks them to set out (i) whether they
resigned under pressure and, if so, (ii) the date and details of that pressure. Although this
section applies to a smaller number of Claimants, those Claimants do not give sufficient details to
enable any analysis to be undertaken so as to identify any common issues or themes or for Post
Office to understand the case it is being asked to meet. For example:
10.1.1 Lawrence Glyn Bailey (7) merely states in his SO! that Post Office said that his
reinstatement would be conditional on the payment of the alleged shortfall. No details of
how / when this pressure was applied by Post Office or how this would be illegitimate
pressure have been provided.
10.1.2 Virendra Bajaj (14) states she resigned due to “Post Office's failure to deal with the
shortfall issues I had been having with Horizon...". On these facts, no pressure appears
to have been applied on the Claimant to resign:
10.1.3 Gary Brown (33) states in his SO! that he was advised by his "union representative" to
resign since "it would look better than if I was terminated to potential new employers".
Mr Brown tendered his resignation prior to the final audit at which the shortfalls were
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found. No details of the pressure applied by Post Office which led to his resignation
have been provided.
We note again that this information will be within your clients’ knowledge and disclosure from
Post Office is not required to address this issue.
Question 7.3
At question 7.3 (in relation to deceit), a large number of the Claimants have used a scripted
response (presumably provided by your firm) of "Yes, as I was led to believe that I had no
alternative but to pay the shortfall".
As we have noted in previous correspondence, claims of deceit can only be advanced where you
have instructions to make such a claim and you have material which you reasonably believe
shows a case for fraud (see IB (5.7) of the Solicitors’ Code of Conduct). The SOls are also
verified by Statements of Truth. We are therefore concerned by the use of a stock answer to this
most important of questions.
Our concern is increased by the fact that the essential factual allegation on which the deceit
claims are based (allegations that your firm was required to establish for each Claimant before
asserting a claim for deceit in an SOI) do not appear to be set out elsewhere in the SOls as we
have explained above. This is important as without this information Post Office is unable to meet
the claim which is being brought against it and such claims may be vuinerable to strike out.
Section 8 - Inadequate quantum information
Senior Master Fontaine intended that Section 8 of the SOls would provide Post Office with a
clear indication of the value of most of the Claimants’ claims and thus a fair idea of the total value
of their claims. This is clearly shown in the transcript from the GLO hearing.
1667. Mr de Garr Robinson QC: Well it would be helpful, it does occur to me that it would be
helpful if each form should in one small section the figure which can be added up to
produce the total claim, if it's just, if my learned friend is simply saying it's a bit duplicative
it won't cost any money to put it in twice.
1668. Senior Master Fontaine: So in other words it's in the quantum section.
1669. Mr de Garr Robinson QC: Yes.
1670. Senior Master Fontaine: Alright. Yes.
1671. Mr Green QC: But we've already got the amount provided for in 8.1.
1672. Senior Master Fontaine: We don't need to put the date in, just put the amounts which
you can just duplicate ...
Whilst the Senor Master did not require values to be given for stigma / reputational damage,
personal injury, bankruptcy / insolvency losses and prosecution losses, she did require values for
every other head of claim. However, in the SOls provided, most of the Claimants have not given
indications of value even where they were required to do so. Consequently, it is not possible to
assess the overall value of most of the claims being brought or to estimate the likely total value of
the claims brought. It is also not possible to judge the value of dealing with any particular issue in
this case, nor is it possible to judge the proportionality of any particular case management step.
In 6 cases, the Claimants have not stated any values at all (Revti Bhanote (21), Shamsudin
Pyarali Govani (66), Steve Bryan Phillips (141), Christopher Sharples (163), Brian Skirrow (170),
and Sally Mary Kathleen Stringer (173)). But even where figures are mentioned, these are not
sufficient to enable an estimate to be made as to the value of any claim. It would appear that
most of the Claimants have not even attempted to make such an estimate, even though they
4A_36701701 89’
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12.6
13.
13.2
14.
14.4
14.2
14.3
14.4
14.5
14.6
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were required to do so. To illustrate these points, we enclose in Schedule 1 of this letter
representative extracts of responses provided to the quantum questions.
Further, as addressed at paragraph 167 of Post Office’s Generic Defence, the losses claimed in
the SOls provided to date fail to specify the breaches of contract or other legal wrongs on Post
Office's part from which the loss and damage resulted and/or consider matters of mitigation or
remoteness.
Post Office has been asking you to provide quantification of the Claimants’ claims since its Letter
of Response on 28 July 2016 and subsequently in (but not limited to) our letters of 31 August
2016, 13 October 2016 (paragraph 8.15), 17 November 2016 (paragraph 8.6) and 30 November
2016 (paragraph 1.3.3).
In addition to this general concern, we address below specific quantification sections which have
been inadequately responded to.
Question 8.4
In paragraph 132 of their Amended GPOC, the Claimants allege that "Claimants who were
terminated without notice have lost the income they would have received during the ... notice
period". In paragraph 71, they also allege that they were entitled to a 12 month notice period.
On this basis, Post Office's understanding of the Claimants’ case was that Post Office should
have provided each Claimant with a minimum of 12 months’ notice.
Despite this, a number of the Claimants have set out losses based on either 3, 6 or 12 month
notice periods (for example, see the SOI for Kamajiit Kooner (103)). The claims asserted in the
SOls are therefore inconsistent with the Amended GPOC. This therefore either requires a further
amendment to the Amended GPOC or to the SOls; the two elements must be aligned.
Question 8.5
Section 8.5 has been inconsistently addressed by different Claimants, who each appear to be
claiming different types of loss of earnings.
First, some Claimants appear to be claiming loss of Post Office remuneration after their notice
period ended (ie. in addition to any claim under section 8.4) but this head of claim is not
referenced in the Amended GPOC. The only sections of the Amended GPOC that we can see
that might relate to this type of claim are:
14.2.1 Paragraph 131 which refers to "reduced profit to linked retail premises". This however
relates to earnings in a related retail business, not remuneration paid by Post Office.
14.2.2 Paragraph 135 which refers to "prejudice to future employment" as a consequence of
stigma / reputation damage. This loss would be picked up in question 8.6 of the SOI,
so we do not believe that this is relevant to question 8.5.
We cannot therefore see any part of the Amended GPOC that sets out a legal basis for claiming
loss of Post Office remuneration beyond the end of a notice period but nevertheless this type of
claim is advanced in the SOls (for example, see the SOls for Lesley Abbott (2), Mohammed
Zubair Amir (6) and Marion Drydale (55)).
Secondly, we note that other Claimants are claiming loss of income from associated retail
businesses and/or from other general loss of earnings through being unable to work. However, it
is not clear whether these claims are for lost revenue or profit or something else.
Thirdly, many Claimants are seeking to claim losses up to retirement, though different retirement
ages are used throughout the SO!s.
Fourthly, there is also in some cases clear duplication or inconsistency between the claims for
loss of earnings under question 8.5 and the claims for loss of capital investment covered under
4A_36701701 90°
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15.
15.2
15.3
16.
16.1
16.2
16.4
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question 8.2. This is despite question 8.5 expressly stating that the questions are linked and
there should not be duplicate claims. For example, Francis Maye (114) states that he sold his
business and claims a £45,000 capital loss whilst simultaneously claiming he would have
continued to work for another 10 years and so claims £325,000 in lost earnings.
This section again reflects the general lack of care used in preparing the SOls, the clear need for
legal assistance in preparing this type of document and a failure to comply with the GLO. It also
highlights inconsistencies in the calculation of losses between the Amended GPOC and SO!s.
The lack of a consistent approach means that Post Office cannot extract common themes and
issues.
Question 8.7
We are surprised by the high proportion of Claimants who have claimed personal injury (at least
65% of the 198 Claimants). However, on reviewing the details of their claims, we see that many
of the Claimants appear to be alleging distress and anxiety rather than a recognised psychiatric
condition. As such, these Claimants have not passed the threshold for bringing a personal injury
claim.
The SOls are verified by Statements of Truth. The Claimants should therefore only be asserting
personal injury claims where they have genuinely suffered an injury and as their lawyers it is your
duty to advise them on what amounts to a recoverable personal injury. Again, the number of
claims for personal injury suggests a lack of involvement from your firm in the preparation of the
SOls.
Please ensure that the personal injury claims are limited to real cases of recognised psychiatric
harm or physical injury. We note that in personal injury cases the Civil Procedure Rules require
medical reports to be annexed to pleadings and our client reserves the right to call for such
reports at an early stage in the litigation process
Action required
The purpose of the SOls was to allow the parties and the Court to identify Claimants who would
fall within distinct categories and enable case management decisions to be made in respect of
these. For this purpose, clear and accurate information and a consistent approach is required
from all the Claimants. However, the details given by the majority of the Claimants are
insufficient to allow us and the Court to understand the basic details of the claims brought against
Post Office.
To obtain a proper coherent and consistent approach in all of the SOls was always going to
require legal assistance and, as far as we were aware, the GLO hearing proceeded on the basis
that this would be provided by your firm. However, the SOls do not seem to have been prepared
on this basis, which is preventing analysis of the claims and is requiring our client to incur
additional costs in trying (and in many cases failing) to understand the claims it is facing
We are writing now to draw your attention to the most serious deficiencies and to ask that you
ensure that that next round of SOls avoid these problems and are consistent, coherent and
compliant with the GLO.
The first tranche of SOls also need to be corrected. We recognise that this will require some time
and invite your proposals as to how and by when this could be done.
Yours faithfully
Kona Dickinson LLP
Bond Dickinson LLP
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! cannot estimate how much I Yes, Post Office have a charge
repaid to make good alleged over my house to cover the
shortfalls alleged shortfalls
1 do not consider this to be I Yes, as I would have Yes, I have lost value of the
an accurate reflection of my retained the value of the business. I am unable to
true investment loss as I business had Post Office not I quantify without expert
anticipated running the Post I acted as they did valuation evidence. However, I
Office for many years and I recall that I paid £5k when took
believe that my loss is higher retail shop over.
than this.
! was not paid any sums that
would have been due to me
during my period of
suspension.
Yes — substantial damages
claim to be assessed:
(a) Had I not been terminated it
was my intention to remain in
the branch for another 6 years
as this is when the loan would
have been paid off.
We were planning to retire at
55 and make a healthy profit
out of the branch. However,
because of the shortages we
had to use all of our
insurance and pension pots,
so we were left with no
money to retire on.
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IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE Claim No. HQ16X01238
QUEEN’S BENCH DIVISION
THE POST OFFICE GROUP LITIGATION
BETWEEN:
ALAN BATES & OTHERS
Claimants
- and —
POST OFFICE LIMITED
Defendant
SCHEDULE OF INFORMATION
1. Claimant & Branch Details
1.1. I Name Mr Peter John Holloway
1.2. I Home address
1.3. I Branch address Branch 1: Wareham Post Office, North
Street, Wareham, Dorset BH20 4AW
Branch 2: Swanage, King Street Swanage
1.4. I Subpostmaster (Yes / No, if No give Branch 1: Subpostmaster
details, e.g. Crown Office Employee,
guarantor of Franchisee) Branch 2: Temporary Subpostmaster
1.5. I Date and form of any contract entered Pending access to any contractual
into with Post Office documents and records that Post Office may
hold, my recollections are as follows:
I believe that on 12" September 2001 I
signed a 1 page “Acknowledgement of
Appointment” form.
Prior to taking over the Wareham Post Office,
I had previously been a Subpostmaster at the
Ref: NXA/2114336/1 1 93 C11/6/131
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Steeple Aston branch for around 3 years.
On 12 September 2001, the day before I
was due to take over the Wareham branch, I
had to attend the branch to witness the audit
of the final accounts and to be handed
control of the branch. Before handing over
control of the branch, the audit provided me
with a copy of a Contract and stated that I
had to sign it before they would give me
control of the branch. As I needed to open
the following day, I simply had to sign the
document without being able to read and
consider it.
Whilst I am unable to confirm the exact date,
following the termination of contract of the
Subpostmaster at the branch in Swanage,
the Post Office asked if ! would take over the
branch as a temporary Subpostmaster. I had
a sign a Modified Subpostmaster Contract.
1.6. I Start date of appointment/engagement Wareham: 12 September 2001
Swanage: Around Jan 2005
1.7. I End date of appointment/engagement Wareham: 7 April 2009
Swanage: Around June 2006
1.8. I Currently employed / engaged? (Yes/No) I No
1.9. I Lived in linked residential premises? No
(Yes/No)
1.10. I Employed assistants? (Yes/No, and if Yes
yes identify number as at date of
termination of appointment) 4
1.11. I Operated a retail business from same Wareham Post Office had a small retail
premises (Yes/No) section.
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2. Training and Support
2.1. I Received initial training from Defendant I Pending access to any training records that
re: Horizon when introduced in Post Office may hold, my recollections are as
1999/2000 (Yes/No) follows:
Yes I did the initial training whilst Postmaster
at Steeple Aston.
2.2. I Received initial training from Defendant I received one days training on Motor Vehicle
re: Horizon when took up position? Licences at the Post Office Area Office
(Yes/No, and if yes give date and brief
details of any training said to have been
inadequate or inappropriate)
2.3. I Received any further training from Yes
Defendant re: Horizon? (Yes/No, and if
yes give date and brief details of any
training said to have been inadequate or
inappropriate)
When we took over Warham we received
further training in branch whilst it was open to
the public. This was not specific to Horizon,
but more on running the bigger branch that
had many more services offered, bigger
turnover and more till positions.
The trainers seemed more interest in drinking
coffee and chatting amongst themselves
outside the secured area, as it came ata
time when their training unit was being re-
organised.
When the trainers were with me at Wareham
their Line Manager arrived, and held a
meeting for a couple of hours, in the secure
area of my office, regarding the PO’s pending
restructure of the training section. That was
also their main topic of conversation for much
of the time they were with me.
One of the male trainers seemed more
interested in the young lady customers than
training me commenting on them and what
they were wearing on many occasions. All
my staff noticed and commented on this.
I was actually taught more by the existing
members of staff than I was by any of the
trainers provided by the Post Office.
2.4. I Contacted Helpline to seek advice re: Pending access to any helpline call logs that
Ref: NXA/2114336/1 3 95 C11/6/133
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Horizon and/or alleged shortfalls? Post Office may hold, my recollections are as
(Yes/No, and if yes give approximate follows:
date and brief details of any advice and I .
responses said to have been inadequate Yes I would contact the helpline 2-3 times
or inappropriate) Per month following the introduction of swipe
cards.
Initially, once we become more experienced
after a short while we contacted the helpline
infrequently. We generally found them
unhelpful. Generally, any shortfall was small
and most of the time we could sort the
problem and take corrective action without
their support as we had a paper audit trail.
It was only after the introduction of swipe
cards with the amended software and
paperless transactions when we started to
have problems.
This left me with no audit trial to establish
transaction errors and reasons for shortages.
It was also after this modification to the
software that stock errors started to appear.
I cannot provide dates or accurate frequency
as the Telephone log I kept was removed
from the office by unknown persons after my
suspension from the office. Staff were
unaware of what happened to it as they were
aware of it and would normally use it in my
absence.
The advice was usually unhelpful, telling me
to check things that I had already checked,
telling me it was my responsibility to make
good any losses.
They usually refused to investigate any
issues I had and on the rare occasions they
did their efforts were half hearted and never
produced any positive results.
They would often claim the shortages were
probably due to theft by staff and they would
regularly claim that we were the only office
having a problem so it must be something we
are doing or not doing.
l once contacted the helpline in relation to a
£2000 loss that had been incurred by the
branch. I identified a transaction where a
Ref: NXA/2114336/1 4 96 C11/6/134
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member of my staff may have made a
mistake in relation to a National Savings
transaction. As the receipt did not contain
customer information, I contacted the
helpline to inform them of the error and to
ask if they could contact National Savings to
see if they could trace the customer, to allow
us to contact them to confirm the error. The
helpline simply stated that this was not
possible and there was nothing that they
could do.
There were also an occasion where on
carrying out a cash rem, £20,000 of money
was transferred out correctly but this was lost
by Horizon. No help was provided by the
helpline. Horizon also appeared to misplace
stock transfers between tills on occasions.
Again when you contacted the helpline, they
simply advise that their was nothing they
could do.
Apparent or Alleged Shortfalls
3.1.
For each apparent or alleged shortfall
attributed by the Defendant to the
Claimant and in relation to which
complaint is made, specify:
(a) Amount(s):
(b) Date(s):
(c) Paid by the Claimant to the
Defendant? (Yes/No, and dates
of payment).
(d) How did the Claimant treat the
above amounts in the accounts
and why?
Pending access to full transaction and
account records from Horizon, I am only able
to give approximate figures:
Shortfall 1: (a) £2548.09
(b) 12 November 2007 stating that I had an
outstanding debt of £2548.09. It did not
explain how the loss was incurred.
(c) Yes the sum was deducted my salary by
1 payment of £637.09 and 3 payments of
£637.
(d) I received a letter dated 12 November
2007 stating that I had an outstanding debt of
£2548.09. It did not explain how the loss was
incurred. As stated above I repaid this sum.
Shortfall 2: (a) Around £1000
Ref: NXA/2114336/1 5
97
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(b) December 2007
(c) Yes
(d) I received a further letter following a
discrepancy after remitting accumulation of
special stamps and philatelic items, which
showed a serious shortfall in stock. Despite
checking the transactions, no errors were
found and I had to pay around £1000.
Shortfall 3: (a) £24,625.16 plus the sums
deducted from my wages between 26 August
2008 to 18 March 2009.
(b) 26 August 2008 to 18 March 2009.
(c) Yes, I am not sure of the dates and the
amounts that were deducted from my wage. I
cannot confirm when exactly I paid the
£24,625.16. I did not have that amount of
money readily available so I was forced to
draw the money out of the lump sum section
of my pension fund.
(d) From August 2008 to March 2009, I
received a total of 13 letters requesting
payment or reminders of the requests for
payment. The letters never however
explained what the discrepancies were or
how they may have occurred.
I seemed to be having issues at the end of
day or monthly balancing. I spoke to the
contracts manager and told him that I
believed the problems were due to the
introduction of paperless banking. He agreed
to give me a period to see if the errors would
correct themselves and if not the sum would
be placed into the suspense account. After a
few months had passed and the errors had
not corrected themselves, Post Office began
to make deductions from my salary as the
accrued shortfall had become too large to
settle in one payment.
Shortfall 4: (a) Lunknown
(b) Various
(c) Various
Ref: NXA/2114336/1 6 98 C11/6/136
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(d) Once the paperless system came in there
were regularly small value shortfalls that I
made good with my own cash. These would
typically be between £20-£50. No tally was
kept of those but over time they amounted to
a significant amount.
4. Audit and Investigation
4.1. I Did the Defendant conduct one or more I can vividly remember the audits taking
audits of the branch prior to termination? I place, however, in relation to specific dates, I
(Yes/No, and if yes give date and brief will require access to Post Office’s audit
details) records. In the meantime, I can give
approximate details as follows:
Yes, regular unannounced annual Adults
dates unknown normally around March/April
each year.
4.2. I Was there an investigation carried out by I No I have seen no evidence of any adequate
the Defendant relating to alleged investigation.
shortfalls? (Yes/No, and if yes give date
and brief details of any investigation(s) in
relation to which the Claimant raises a
complaint)
5. Suspension and Termination
5.1. I Was the Claimant suspended for a Yes, On 17 March 2009 due to a shortage in
reason related to alleged shortfalls? my personal bank account, following the
(Yes/No, and if yes give date and brief deductions in my monthly wage received and
details of any suspensions in relation the increase in rent for the branch premises, I
which the Claimant raises a complaint) noted that I had insufficient funds to pay the
staff wages the next day. In order to ensure I
could pay the wages, I was going to withdraw
money out on credit card at lunchtime.
Before I was due to go out, the branch had a
problem with the Horizon system and I had to
reset all the computers, which took all
afternoon. The office closed for business in
the evening and I had not been able to get
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out to withdraw cash.
I was panicking as I was not making enough
to live on and keep the business afloat. Sick
with worry and not really thinking straight due
to all the pressure I was under, I sold to
myself £323 of first class stamps and paid for
these with my credit card. I reversed the
transaction and was going to return the
money to myself in the form of cash. I left the
money in the safe overnight with the intention
of removing it in the morning.
On 18 March 2009 auditors arrived at the
branch to carry out an audit. The auditor
found that the cash was over. I immediately
advised that auditors about the above
transaction. I was immediately suspended by
the auditor.
Following my suspension, I believe the
temporary sub postmaster placed in the
branch had similar problems with regular
significant losses.
terminated by Defendant, was this for a
reason related to alleged shortfalls?
5.2. I If the Claimant was suspended:
(a) W. he b h closed by th (a) Yes 18 March 2009 until a temporary
a fas the branch close y the Subpost te inted
Defendant? (Yes/No, and if yes ubposimasier was appointed.
give date)
(b) Was a temporary Subpostmaster ({b) Yes but I am unsure of the date that
appointed by the Defendant? the temporary Subpostmaster was.
(Yes/No, and if yes give date) appointed.
(c) Was the Claimant prevented from
accessing records within the (c) I was not allowed into the office or to
branch? 4 we taal) if yes give communicate with the temporary Sub
are ' Poster master about Post Office
Business.
5.3. I How did the Claimant's appointment My contract was terminated by Post Office
end? (Terminated by Defendant /
Resigned)
5.4. I If the Claimant's appointment was Yes, the Post Office stated that I had
misused Post Office Funds, failed to keep
accounts in the prescribed form and stated
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(Yes/No) that I had lost control of my branch.
Was that reason stated by Post Office?
(Yes/No)
5.5. I Did the Defendant give notice? (Yes/No, I No
and if yes, state period of notice)
5.6. I If the Claimant resigned, was this under I N/a
pressure from Defendant for a reason
related to alleged shortfalls (Yes/No, and
if yes give date and brief details)?
5.7. I Did the Defendant prevent or impede Yes, I had two seperate offers of £85,000
sale or transfer of the Claimant's from established local business people,
business? (Yes/No, and if yes give date I which, whilst still below the true value of the
and brief details) business, I accepted due to the position I
was in. The Post Office however rejected the
applications of the busniess people for
undisclosed reasons.
After a protracted period I received an offer
an offer of £50,000. The Post Office
approved the application. The offer was
worth less than 60% of the value of the
business. In addition the purchaser didn't
want any of the retail stock or equipment on
lease agreements, which I had to settle out of
the sum I received from the sale of the
business.
6. Civil and Criminal Proceedings
6.1. I Did the Defendant pursue recovery of No
any alleged shortfalls by civil
proceedings? (Yes/No, and if yes give
date and brief details)
6.2. I If yes, what was outcome of Nia
proceedings? (Settled, Judgment for
Claimant, Judgment for Defendant,
currently stayed)
Please give date and brief details.
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6.3.
Did the Defendant pursue any criminal
proceedings against the Ciaimant?
(Yes/No)
No
6.4.
If yes, specify (with dates):
(a) charges (Theft, False Accounting,
and any other charges);
(b) outcome (guilty after contested
trial, acquitted after contested
trial, guilty plea, not pursued).
Nia
6.5.
Has any conviction been referred to the
Criminal Case Review Commission or is
the subject of any appeal? (Yes/No)
Nia
Nature of claims pursued
In this section, indicate whether the Claimant relies on generic Particulars of Claim in respect of the
types of claim identified (in each case, Yes/No).
7.1. I Contract, tort & fiduciary duty Yes
(i) Training Yes
(ii) Support Yes
(iii) I Availability of transactional information Yes
(iv) I Execution / reconciling transactions Yes
(v) Inappropriate attribution of alleged Yes
shortfalls
(vi) I Demands for payment Yes
(vii) I Investigation Yes
(viii) I Suspension Yes
(ix) I Termination Yes
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(x) Pressure to resign No
(xi) I Impeding sale / transfer Yes
(xii) I Concealment Yes
(xiii) I Breaches of overarching duties Yes
7.2. I Harassment No
7.3. I Deceit Yes, as I was led to believe that I had no
alternative but to pay the shortfalls.
7.4. I Malicious Prosecution No
7.5. I Unjust Enrichment Yes
8. Nature of claims for loss
8.1. I Repayment of alleged shortfalls (Yes/No I Yes £28,173.25, plus the sums deducted
and amount) directly from my wage received between
August 2008 and March 2009.
Plus all sums found to be repayable following
disclosure and upon investigation by the
court.
8.2. I Loss of investment (Yes/No, and Yes — see 5.7 above. Subject to expert
approximate value, subject to expert evidence, I lost in the region of £64,000 out
evidence) of the £100,000 capital investment plus
interest, in purchasing the goodwill and lease
£75,000, the stock of £2000 and completing
the required renovations at a cost of £25,000
and having to pay £12,000 to terminate the
lease of the copier in the branch as this was
not required by the purchaser.
8.3. I Loss of earnings during suspension Yes, My gross salary at the time of the
(approximate value and brief details) suspension was approximately £95,000. I
would estimate that my loss of earnings from
18 March 2009 to 7 April 2009 at £8000.
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8.4. I Loss of earnings for failure to give notice I I am not sure of the notice period, however
(approximate value) my gross monthly wage was just under
£8000.
8.5. I Loss of earnings post termination (period I Yes — substantial damages claim to be
claimed and approximate value) [If not assessed:
already dealt with at 8.2 above]
(a) Had I not been terminated it was my
intention to remain in the branch for
another 6 years as this is when the
loan would have been paid off.
8.6. I Stigma and/or reputational damage I was very much involved in the community in
(Yes/No and brief details) Wareham. I was Chairman of the local
Chamber of Commerce, a Member of Rotary,
holding many offices including twice
president. I worked closely with the local
council elected members sitting on a number
of working groups they set up to improve
Wareham as an area and trading center. I
belonged to a number of social groups and
organisations, all of which I was forced to
stand down from. Many of my previous
associates ceased any contact or association
with me or my wife, believing we had
committed fraud or theft. When I managed to
get a part time job delivering vegetables a
customer of that company refused to deal
with me as he considered I was a thief and
untrustworthy. He had been a regular
customer at the Post Office. When I was Post
Master at Wareham, I would walk down a
street nearly everyone I passed would
acknowledge me, that changed greatly after
my suspension.
8.7. I Personal Injury (Yes/No and brief details, I I was under considerable stress during this
subject to expert evidence) process until the business was sold and we
managed to sell our house in Dorset and
relocate to Northumberland where property is
much cheaper. This enabled us to buy a
property and repay some of the debts
incurred through this issue. My wife suffered
with: which is i i
treated and has received
Her general health has also deteriorated and
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over the intervening period she has be
treated for many conditions.
8.8. I Losses related to bankruptcy/other No
insolvency procedures (Yes/No and brief
details)
8.9. I Losses related to prosecution (Yes/No No
and brief details)
8.10. I Any other loss not covered above £17646 in interest only loan repayments from
(identify category and provide, brief March 2009 —June 2014 when we sold our
details and amount). home. After I was suspended I had to reduce
the payments of the business loan to interest
only payments due to our financial situation.
After my Termination, we tried to sell our
home it was valued at £430,000 by the
Estate Agent. We now have a property worth
£200,000, the equity of the property was
used to pay off debts and the business loan
acquired after termination of my contract. I
would like to claim the £230,000 difference.
Whilst I am unable to provide figures, I
regularly had to use credit cards and
overdraft facilities to survive, which has
amounted to several thousands of pounds in
interest and fees.
Plus any further losses found to have been
suffered following disclosure and expert
quantum evidence.
The information provided in this Schedule is true to the best of the Claimant’s knowledge
and belief on the basis of the information presently available to the Claimant. However,
the information is provided prior to disclosure by the Defendant, prior to any expert
evidence, and figures provided in relation to loss are approximations only.
Ref: NXA/2114336/1 13 105 C11/6/143
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I! believe,that.tha facts. ated in this Schadule.are true.
Signed: +
Date: po* Tune 201)
Ref: NXA/2114336/1
Ref: NXA/2114336/1 14 106 C11/6/144
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IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE Claim No. HQ16X01238
QUEEN’S BENCH DIVISION
THE POST OFFICE GROUP LITIGATION
BETWEEN:
ALAN BATES & OTHERS
Claimants
-and—-
POST OFFICE LIMITED
Defendant
SCHEDULE OF INFORMATION
1. Claimant & Branch Details
41.1. I Name Mr Shamsudin Pyarali Govani
1.2. I Home address i ;
1.3. I Branch address [ G R O ill,
1.4. I Subpostmaster (Yes / No, if No give Subpostmaster
details, e.g. Crown Office Employee,
guarantor of Franchisee)
1.5. I Date and form of any contract entered Pending access to any contractual
into with Post Office documents and records that Post Office may
hold, my recollections are as follows:
I believe that on 21* December 1998 I signed
a 1 page “Acknowledgement of Appointment”
document, which I understand made
reference to a Standard Subpostmaster
Contract.
1.6. I Start date of appointment/engagement October 1998
1.7. I End date of appointment/engagement N/A
Ref: DAH/2375/2117812/1 1 145
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4.8. I Currently employed / engaged? (Yes/No) I Yes
1.9. I Lived in linked residential premises? Yes
(Yes/No)
1.10. I Employed assistants? (Yes/No, and if Yes — 2 part-time staff currently. Before that
yes identify number as at date of there were 4 of us in total working across
termination of appointment) both the PO and the store.
1.11. I Operated a retail business from same Yes — mini-market, off-licence, newsagent.
premises (Yes/No)
2. Training and Support
2.1. I Received initial training from Defendant Pending access to any training records that
re: Horizon when introduced in Post Office may hold, my recollections are as
1999/2000 (Yes/No) follows:
In 1998 when I first took the PO I was
originally trained by a Mr Harris with the old
paper system. I come from a family who have
run branches for a number of years including
my father who ran The Common Post Office
on Staines Road in Twickenham in the
1970s. In those days the balancing took
approximately 4-5 hours so when Horizon
was first introduced we thought it would be
great and would simplify a lot of things.
When Horizon was introduced I went to a
Hotel for 2-3 days of training with
approximately 10 other people who were also
Subpostmasters. There were 10 Horizon
systems set up and we were shown how to
carry out basic transactions. I was fascinated
by the system at the beginning but having
been used to the old paper system, I quickly
realised that I was reliant on feeding the
information into the system everyday.
I thought the training that I received was okay
in terms of how to operate the system but it
did not go beyond that and it did not teach
you about how it worked.
Ref: DAH/2375/2117812/1 2
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With the old paper system if I had a shortfall
then I had access to the paperwork in the
branch which I could then go back through to
work out where the shortfall had occurred.
However, with the Horizon system I no longer
had this capability as I could not access
historical data.
2.2. I Received initial training from Defendant I N/A
re: Horizon when took up position?
(Yes/No, and if yes give date and brief
details of any training said to have been
inadequate or inappropriate)
2.3. I Received any further training from When the system was actually installed at my
Defendant re: Horizon? (Yes/No, and if I branch I recall a lady from the PO coming in
yes give date and brief details of any for a few days to help out with any issues as
training said to have been inadequate or I they arose.
inappropriate)
2.4. I Contacted Helpline to seek advice re: Pending access to any helpline call logs that
Horizon and/or alleged shortfalls? Post Office may hold, my recollections are as
(Yes/No, and if yes give approximate follows:
date and brief details of any advice and
responses said to have been inadequate
or inappropriate)
Yes but less than once a month.
On one occasion I spoke with “Sean” about a
£1,000 shortfall I had. The assistance from
the Helpline was focused on establishing
whether I had pressed a wrong button or
whether I had pressed withdrawal rather than
deposit. It was therefore all about
establishing user error and there was never
any question or possibility that it was the
Horizon system at fault.
3. Apparent or Alleged Shortfalls
3.1. I For each apparent or alleged shortfall Pending access to full transaction and
attributed by the Defendant to the account records from Horizon, I am only able
Claimant and in relation to which to give approximate figures, although I do
complaint is made, specify: have a clear recollection of payments having
been made by me.
(a) Amount(s):
(b) Date(s):
(c) Paid by the Claimant to the
6147
Ref: DAH/2375/2117812/1 3
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Defendant? (Yes/No, and dates I I would estimate that throughout my position
of payment). in branch, I paid (or Post Office deducted) in
(d) How did the Claimant treat the I excess of £6,000 over the 17 odd years since
above amounts in the accounts Horizon was introduced. This figure is an
and why? accumulation of lots of smaller shortfalls with
the maximum shortfall I ever incurred in one
instance was £1,100.
4. Audit and Investigation
4.1. I Did the Defendant conduct one or more ! can vividly remember the audits and/or
audits of the branch prior to termination? I investigations taking place, however, in
(Yes/No, and if yes give date and brief relation to specific dates, I will require access
details) to Post Office’s audit records. In the
meantime, I can give approximate details as
follows:
Over the years at Lawrence Hill I have had
4/5 audits.
One audit was in August 2012. Paul
Hammond was my Auditor who I knew from
my previous dealings helping out at other
branches. He attended with two ladies and I
had a perfect audit as I was in the PO’s
acceptable limits.
However, as my audit was being done 2
gentlemen from Grapevine (the PO Security)
walked in one of whom was particularly
arrogant and very aggressive looking like he
was an undercover CID officer.
He came over to me and confirmed that he
wanted to search my property as the PO was
conducting an investigation of me. I took him
around my property and asked him what he
was looking for. His reply was “we'll tell you
when we find it”. He then asked me for my
bank statements which I remember showing
him. I was immediately suspended but I was
not told anything about why that was the
case. I was then invited to go along with the
gentlemen to an interview at Filton Patchway
Royal Mail Office which I did on the same
day. The interview was awful — I was treated
like a criminal with the two gentlemen from
Grapevine shouting at me and banging their
fists on the desk. I was still completely in the
Ref: DAH/2375/2117812/1 4 re ET 116/148
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dark about what this was about and I
eventually said “look if you tell me what this
is about I can answer your questions”.
The jist of the whole thing investigation was
that the gentlemen from Grapevine simply
could not understand why I had thousands of
pounds worth of reversals on my postage.
At this point it dawned on me that the PO had
got completely the wrong end of the stick and
that what they were referring to was the way I
transacted with Ebay customers who I had
lots of. One lady customer I had in particular
spent £1,500 every week in mailing out about
400 parcels.
When someone brings in such a large
number of parcels it is simply not practical to
do the postage there and then otherwise the
customer would be stood there in the branch
for over an hour and I would not be able to
serve any other customers. I therefore would
keep the parcels and do the postage later on
when the branch was shut. On that basis I
did not take the payment from the customer
straight away because I could not take
money from the customer without providing
the service there and then and a receipt. I
would therefore pay the postage myself once
I completed it that evening and then obtain a
reimbursement from the customer whenever
they next came into the branch. At no time
was the PO out of pocket at all.
This process was why reversals were
required. I had paid the postage so the
system was balanced. When the customer
then came into pay they obviously want an
official PO receipt so I ring in the postage
again, the customer pays the bill and I give
them a receipt. However, this means that the
postage has been paid twice so to ensure
that everything is balanced I then reverse the
transaction.
As they did not understand the system the
gentlemen from Grapevine simply thought
that I was pocketing hundreds of thousands
of pounds. My suspension was therefore
‘GRO
Ref: DAH/2375/2117812/1 Senn er1i6/149
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continued whilst Grapevine were apparently
investigating and at this stage I involved
Mark Baker who was my CW Union
representative. Mark is also a Subpostmaster
and understood straight away what I
explained to him as he knew of other people
who did the same thing and there was
absolutely nothing wrong with it.
Mark was immediately concerned with the
approach that the PO had taken with me and
that I had been suspended even though
there was no shortfall and that they had no
warrant to search my property.
Mark asked for the recording of my interview
only to be told that the PO had lost it. PO
eventually reinstated me without any finding
of wrongdoing at all but the whole process
took about 2 months.
4.2. I Was there an investigation carried out by I I have seen no evidence of any adequate
the Defendant relating to alleged investigation and again, the recording of my
shortfalls? (Yes/No, and if yes give date I intereview was unfortuantely lost by the PO.
and brief details of any investigation(s) in
relation to which the Claimant raises a
complaint)
5. Suspension and Termination
5.1. I Was the Claimant suspended for a No
reason related to alleged shortfalls?
(Yes/No, and if yes give date and brief
details of any suspensions in relation
which the Claimant raises a complaint)
5.2. I If the Claimant was suspended: The PO accepted my Brother-in-Law as a
temporary Subpostmaster during my
suspension but I received no pay and was
not reimbursed when the suspension was
lifted so I am still owed that.
(a) Was the branch closed by the
Defendant? (Yes/No, and if yes
give date)
(b) Was a temporary Subpostmaster
i ‘?
CEN: and yecaive dato) Whilst I was suspended I was not allowed
(c) Was the Claimant prevented from anywhere near the office and I was not
accessing records within the I allowed access to any information at all.
branch? (Yes/No, and if yes give
date and brief details)
Ref: DAH/2375/2117812/1 6
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5.3. I How did the Claimant's appointment N/A
end? (Terminated by Defendant /
Resigned)
5.4. I If the Claimant's appointment was. NIA
terminated by Defendant, was this for a
reason related to alleged shortfalls?
5.5. I Did the Defendant give notice? (Yes/No, I N/A
and if yes, state period of notice)
5.6. I If the Claimant resigned, was this under I N/A
pressure from Defendant for a reason
related to alleged shortfalls (Yes/No, and
if yes give date and brief details)?
5.7. I Did the Defendant prevent or impede In October 2016 a local PO about a mile
sale or transfer of the Claimant's away shut down. I therefore became
business? (Yes/No, and if yes give date I incredibly busy and about 3 months ago I
and brief details) had an interested buyer who was willing to
put down a £10,000 deposit and offered me
£150,000 for the leasehold. However we then
found out that the PO was moving the closed
branch to within half a mile of my branch
meaning that my business is bound to suffer
and my interested buyer understandably got
cold feet.
6. Civil and Criminal Proceedings
6.1. I Did the Defendant pursue recovery of No
any alleged shortfalls by civil
proceedings? (Yes/No, and if yes give
date and brief details)
6.2. I If yes, what was the outcome of the NIA
proceedings? (Settled, Judgment for
Claimant, Judgment for Defendant,
currently stayed)
Please give date and brief details.
6.3. I Did the Defendant pursue any criminal No
proceedings against the Claimant?
Ref: DAH/2375/2117812/1 7
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od 1116154
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(Yes/No)
6.4.
If yes, specify (with dates):
(a) charges (Theft, False Accounting,
and any other charges);
(b) outcome (guilty after contested
trial, acquitted after contested
trial, guilty plea, not pursued).
N/A
6.5.
Has any conviction been referred to the
Criminal Case Review Commission or is
the subject of any appeal? (Yes/No)
NIA
Nature of claims pursued
In this section, indicate whether the Claimant relies on generic Particulars of Claim in respect of the
types of claim identified (in each case, Yes/No).
7.1. I Contract, tort & fiduciary duty
(i) Training Yes
(ii) I Support Yes
(iii) I Availability of transactional information Yes
(iv) I Execution / reconciling transactions Yes
(v) I Inappropriate attribution of alleged Yes
shortfalls
(vi) I Demands for payment No
(vii) I Investigation Yes
(viii) I Suspension Yes
(ix) I Termination No
(x) I Pressure to resign No
Ref: DAH/2375/2117812/1 8
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beeen “et 1/6152
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(xi) I Impeding sale / transfer Yes
(xii) I Concealment Yes. I spoke to Shaun at PO's transaction
about a shortfall I had. Even then Shaun said
it cannot be anything other than user error.
(xiii) I Breaches of overarching duties Yes
7.2. I Harassment No
7.3. I Deceit Yes, as I was led to believe that I had no
alternative but to pay the shortfalls and I
believed that a thorough and fair
investigation had determined that payment
was due.
7.4. I Malicious Prosecution No
7.5. I Unjust Enrichment Yes
8. Nature of claims for loss
8.1. I Repayment of alleged shortfalls (Yes/No I Yes
and amount)
8.2. I Loss of investment (Yes/No, and No
approximate value, subject to expert
evidence)
8.3. I Loss of earnings during suspension Yes
(approximate value and brief details)
8.4. I Loss of earnings for failure to give notice I N/A
(approximate value)
8.5. I Loss of earnings post termination (period I N/A
claimed and approximate value) [If not
already dealt with at 8.2 above]
8.6. I Stigma and/or reputational damage Yes —I was called a liar and a thief by PO
Ref: DAH/2375/2117812/1 9
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(Yes/No and brief details) when they interviewed me and suspended
me.
8.7. I Personal Injury (Yes/No and brief details, I Yes — Stress.
subject to expert evidence)
8.8. I Losses related to bankruptcy/other No
insolvency procedures (Yes/No and brief
details)
8.9. I Losses related to prosecution (Yes/No No
and brief details)
8.10. I Any other loss not covered above Any further losses found to have been
(identify category and provide, brief suffered following disclosure and expert
details and amount). quantum evidence.
The information provided in this Schedule is true to the best of the Claimant's knowledge
and belief on the basis of the information presently available to the Claimant. However, the
information is provided prior to disclosure by the Defendant, prior to any expert evidence,
and figures provided in relation to loss are approximations only.
I believe that the facts, Stated in this Schedule are true.
Date:
Mobley
Ref: DAH/2375/2117812/1
Ref: DAH/2375/2117812/1
10
116
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IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE Claim No. HQ16X01238
QUEEN’S BENCH DIVISION
THE POST OFFICE GROUP LITIGATION
BETWEEN:
ALAN BATES & OTHERS
Claimants
- and —
POST OFFICE LIMITED
Defendant
SCHEDULE OF INFORMATION
1. Claimant & Branch Details
1.1. I Name Mrs Jennifer O'Dell
1.2. IHomeaddress EEE EET
1.3. I Branch address 24 The Highway (288230)
Great Staughton
St. Neots
Cambridgeshire
PE195DA
1.4. I Subpostmaster (Yes / No, if No give Yes, Subpostmistress
details, e.g. Crown Office Employee,
guarantor of Franchisee)
1.5. I Date and form of any contract entered Pending access to any contractual
117
Ref: ER/OR/GC/2113848/1 1 C11/6/155
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into with Post Office documents and records that the Post Office
may hold, my recollections are as follows:
I was offered the position as a
subpostmistress on 26 September 2000 and
I accepted it on 3 October 2000, and I
became a subpostmistress on 20 November
2000
On 3° October 2000 I signed a short 1 page
document called “Conditions of
Appointment”. I don’t recall ever having been
provided with a full copy of a contract.
There has been some confusion with the
status of my contract, I was initially on a
Restricted Hours Office contract, then in
2001 told I was on a Community Contract
then later informed it was a Restricted Hours
Office again. This is indictaive of the nature
of my contracutal relationship with Post
Office Limited having never being clear.
I eventually received a copy of a contractual
document in August 2002. However, I am still
not entire clear what the nature of the
contract was.
1.6. I Start date of appointment/engagement 20 November 2000
1.7. I End date of appointmentengagement 19 February 2010
1.8. I Currently employed / engaged? (Yes/No) I No
1.9. I Lived in linked residential premises? Yes
(Yes/No)
1.10. I Employed assistants? (Yes/No, and if Yes: 1, my son worked in the Post Office up
yes identify number as at date of until the time of my suspension
termination of appointment)
1.11. I Operated a retail business from same Yes
premises (Yes/No)
Ref: ER/OR/GC/2113848/1 2 118 C11/6/156
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2. Training and Support
2.1. I Received initial training from Defendant I Yes
re: Horizon when introduced in
1999/2000 (Yes/No)
2.2. I Received initial training from Defendant I Pending access to any training records that
re: Horizon when took up position? Post Office may hold, my recollections are as
(Yes/No, and if yes give date and brief follows:
details of any training said to have been
inadequate or inappropriate) I received a half day of classroom training in
the branch on Horizon approximately 4-6
months before the system was installed at
my branch. This training consisted of mainly
front office type tasks. I was given a leaflet
explaining reversals of cash to cheques and
vice versa. There was no training on
balancing or remittances of cash and stock.
The training was almost completely useless
because I had forgotten most of it by the time
the Horizon was installed a short time after.
2.3. I Received any further training from No, I was not aware of any further training
Defendant re: Horizon? (Yes/No, and if I available.
yes give date and brief details of any
training said to have been inadequate or
inappropriate)
2.4. I Contacted Helpline to seek advice re: Pending access to any Helpline call logs that
Horizon and/or alleged shortfalls? Post Office may hold, my recollections are as
(Yes/No, and if yes give approximate follows:
date and brief details of any advice and
responses said to have been inadequate
or inappropriate)
In the first 9 years I called the Helpline
approximately once per month, usually for an
administrative reason rather than anything to
do with Horizon. If I called about Horizon
then it would have been to reverse a
transaction that I had processed incorrectly. I
found the Helpline to be occasionally useful
but most of the time not at all. It was
apparent that the assistants operating the
Helpline were reading answers off a screen
and had not received adequate training
themselves to understand and find solutions
to errors that I was experiencing with
Ref: ER/OR/GC/2113848/1 3 119 C11/6/157
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Horizon.
In 2009 I began to suffer large cash
discrepancies. I called the Helpline on 4th
August 2009 to report a problem with
Horizon. When I had performed the account
balancing in May 2009, the system had
indicated an alleged shortfall of
approximately £1,000, the same amount kept
appearing on the system when performing
the account balancing in subsequent months
since May 2009.
When I contacted the Helpline, the assistant
persistently told me to “Pay the money back”.
I kept repeating to the her that no monies
had been taken from the account and that
there was a problem with the Horizon
system. She continued to tell me that the
only solution was to repay the money, to the
point where she was shouting at me.
Between August and October 2009, I called
the Helpline several times to speak to my
area manager, Bob Sinclair. I kept leaving
messages asking for him to contact me, as
this was the only way to make contact with
an area manager, however he never
contacted me.
On 9 September 2009 I called the Helpline,
and informed them again that there was a
problem with the system, and that a shortfall
of approximately £1,000 per month had been
showing since May. The assistant told me to
pay the money back. Again I told her that no
monies had gone missing. She then asked
me if my PIN pad had been playing up, to
which I said that it had. She advised me to
print out a daily transaction listing and
advised me on how to do this. She then told
me again to pay the monies back. On 23
October 2009 I called the Helpline again
regarding the system shortfall which had
been growing at about £1,000 per month
since May. The assistant informed me that
she would get an engineer to ring me and
would also send out a cleaning card for the
PIN pad, but this didn’t happen. On 4
November 2009 I rang the Helpline and
Ref: ER/OR/GC/2113848/1 4 120 C11/6/158
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again told them the system was faulty, and
that shortfalls accumluated had now reached
approximately £7,000 to date. The assistant
kept saying “pay the money back”. She
eventually asked me if I wanted the problem
escalated to “tier two”. I asked why I hadn't
been offered this option before, and she
couldn't answer that.
On Sth November 2009 I received a call from
Ms. Muddeman, the Contracts Manager. She
told me that I no longer had an area
manager, which explained why my messages
that I had left for Bob Sinclair had been
ignored. I told her that there was a problem
with the Horizon system as I had been
expericing shortfalls of approximately £1000
per month since May 2009 she informed me
that I would have to prove it and if I wasn't
able to then I would have to make the the
apparent shortfall good. She asked me why I
had not transferred the shortfall to the
suspense account, but I didn’t know what this
meant.
When I went for mediation, POL reported that
I had never told them how much money was
allegedly missing and the Helpline logs also
indicted this. POL suggested that it was not
until November 2009 that I declared the full
alleged losses. I dispute this entirely as I kept
the Helpline informed continuously, including
details of the value of any alleged shortfalls.
3. Apparent or Alleged Shortfalls
3.1. I For each apparent or alleged shortfall Pending access to full transaction and
attributed by the Defendant to the account records from Horizon, I am only able
Claimant and in relation to which to give approximate figures, although I do
complaint is made, specify: have a clear recollection of payments having
been made by me.
(a) Amount(s):
(b) Date(s): I cannot estimate the a figure in regards to
(¢) Paid by re Caimant oy the I monies paid back as any suplus was often
of payment (Yes/No, and dates used to make good minor discrepancies and
(d) How did the Claimant treat the I did not pay back any of the larger alleged
above amounts in the accounts I losses. .
and why?
Ref: ER/OR/GC/2113848/1 5 124 C11/6/159
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In respect to alleged shortfalls from 2009:
Shortfall 1
(a) £1,006
(b) May 2009
(c) I repaid approximately £6 so that the
shortfall was exactly £1,000, this came from
a previously surplus which I had removed
from the system and put it to one side.
(a)
I informed the helpline of the discrepancy
and their response was to inform obligation
to make good the alleged shortfall
Shortfall 2
a) £1,000
b) July 2009
c) I made good £750 of this alleged shortfall
in cash withdrawn using my Barclaycard.
d).
I was confident that there was a fault with the
system and so when I put the £750 in, it was
to establish whether this actually had an
effect on the alleged losses. However, when I
put the cash in, it made no difference and the
alleged loss continued to show at £2,000 (the
£1,000 of July 2009 plus the previous alleged
shortfall of May 2009). I reported the shortfall
to the Helpline on 4 August 2009
On 5 November 2009 the alleged shortfall
was approximately £6,000 - £7,000. I
decided to take the £750 back to see if it
made any difference to the figure. It did not,
so it was obvious that Horizon was
malfunctioning. On 16 December 2009 the
shortfall was £8,506, however by 21
December 2009 it showed a gain of
approximately £7,000, which I thought must
have been the correct figure.
Two POL employees attended my branch on
6 January 2010 (detailed below) and I was
Ref: ER/OR/GC/2113848/1 6 122 C11/6/160
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told that the total alleged shortfall had
accumulated to £9,616.66. The ‘audit’ report
purports the cash discrepancy at various
dates between June and December 2009. I
do not think that this is correctly reflects the
true nature of my accounts and it leads me to
believe that the Post Office has different data
to that available to me. In 2010 I was
threatened by the Post Office with civil
proceedings, but noting materialised.
4 Audit and Investigation
4.1. I Did the Defendant conduct one or more I can clearly remember the audit taking
audits of the branch prior to termination? I place, however, in relation to specific dates, I
(Yes/No, and if yes give date and brief will require access to Post Office’s audit
details) records. In the meantime, I can give
approximate details as follows:
My branch was “audited” on 6 January 2010
by Lesley Frost and Keith Skelton. However I
do not accept that I received a thorough and
proper audit. I understand that Mr Skelton
and Ms Frost were administrative staff
employed by the Post Office and were not
trained or qualified to audit the branch. I got
the impression that they did not have a
comprehensive understanding of the
workings of a Post Office. For example, Mr
Skelton, was counting the stamps and asked
me why Christmas stamps had not been
declared, These had actually been declared
and when I informed him of such, he made a
response which I was unable to hear and
would not repeat himself.
They visited the branch at 9:00am and the
branch was subsequently closed for the day.
It was my understanding that the employees
had come to fix the Horizon. In the
investigation neither of the supposed auditors
looked at my Horizon terminal. I have had
sight of the “audit” report and I note that it
states that I had settled the shortfall with the
Post Office of £1,853.13 centrally.
If this was true, I was not aware of having
made any such payments. If upon disclosure
I discover that the Post Office deducted this
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from my salary without telling me, I believe
reserve the right to bring a claim in respect of
this potential loss. At the end of this
supposed “audit” I was suspended.
POL later produced a Horizon print out
suggesting that on this day, at approximately,
10.55, I had used the terminal. This could not
be true because I had logged in at 8.55 and
then been automatically logged out after 20
minutes and then did not use the terminal
again thereafter (described in detail below).
4.2. I Was there an investigation carried out by I Between January and August 2010 I was
the Defendant relating to alleged interviewed under caution by Jon Longman
shortfalls? (Yes/No, and if yes give date I and Lisa Allen. My son had accompanied me
and brief details of any investigation(s) in I to this audit in case he was called upon as a
relation to which the Claimant raises a witness. When I left the room on completion
complaint) of my interview, Jon and Lisa asked if they
could speak to my son, Daniel O'Dell, who
was a branch assistant at the time that I was
suspended, to have an ‘Off the record’
conversation. During this conversation, my
son was asked ‘do you love your mother?’ to
which he answered yes and was then briefly
questioned as to whether whether he thought
I had taken the money.
After these interviews my son sent Mr
Longman a letter explaining how he thought
that an error on one stock unit had caused
the losses.
On 17 July 2010 Mr Longman sent me a
caution by post to sign which I did not sign.
On 23 July 2010 he telephoned me chasing
the return of the signed caution and I said
that I would not and that I had not had a reply
to my son’s letter. Mr Longman said that he
had consulted with other Post Office
employees and concluded that a fault on the
stock unti was highly unlikely. Mr Longman
also made some remarks about possible
charges for false accoutning as opposed to
Ref: ER/OR/GC/2113848/1 8 124 C11/6/162
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fraud but I cannot recall the exact details of
this comment.
Mr Longman wrote to me again on 18 August
2000 stating that he would not be taking any
further action. In that letter he stated that he
“found no weight’ in my son’s theory.
5. Suspension and Termination
5.1. I Was the Claimant suspended for a Yes, on 6 January 2010.
reason related to alleged shortfalls?
(Yes/No, and if yes give date and brief
details of any suspensions in relation
which the Claimant raises a complaint)
5.2. I If the Claimant was suspended:
(a) Yes, on 6 January 2010.
(a) Was the branch closed by the
Defendant? (Yes/No, and if yes
give date) (b) No
(b) Was a temporary Subpostmaster
appointed by the Defendant? (c) Yes, I was not able to access the
(Yes/No, and if yes give date) Horizon system.. In August 2012 and
(c) Was the Claimant prevented from again in 2015, I made Freedom of
accessing records within the Information requests for documents
branch? (Yes/No, and if yes give held by the Post Office, including
date and brief details) daily transaction logs and records of
the conversations that I had had with
the Helpline.
On 1 April 2009, I was told at the
interview with Jon Longman that I
would not be able to have access to
the accounting records as it would
cost too much to request from a third
party, in excess of £2,000.
I had a meeting with Angela van den
Bogerd of the Post Office on 9 March
2015. The night before the interview I
had come across a computer printout
that I had requested regarding the
Ref: ER/OR/GC/2113848/1 9 125 C11/6/163
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above mentioned transaction
supposedly made on 6 January 2010,
long after my access to Horizon had
been revoked.. I was told that I must
have made these entries as they had
been made under my name. Ms Van
Den Bogard told me to bring this up at
the mediation meeting as she did not
know what that entry was and could
offer no explanation there and then
During the mediation, Post Office
brought a copy of another document
that specified when I had carried out
the account balancing on the 29
December 2009 - but they had altered
the date to 06 January 2010.Ms Van
Den Bogard was trying to prove that I
was on the system on this date. . Post
Office refused to let me see this
document properly but relied on it in
order to present their interpretation of
the accounts. I was sent this later but
I believe at the time that the Post
Office was trying to manipulate me
into accepting a settlement while still
refusing to provide me with the
information I required to make such a
decision.
and if yes, state period of notice)
5.3. I How did the Claimant's appointment I was terminated by the Post Office on 19
end? (Terminated by Defendant / February 2010.
Resigned)
5.4. I If the Claimant's appointment was Yes
terminated by Defendant, was this for a
reason related to alleged shortfalls?
(Yes/No) Yes
Was that reason stated by Post Office?
(Yes/No)
5.5. I Did the Defendant give notice? (Yes/No, I No
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5.6. I If the Claimant resigned, was this under I N/A
pressure from Defendant for a reason
related to alleged shortfalls (Yes/No, and
if yes give date and brief details)?
5.7. I Did the Defendant prevent or impede Yes. When I applied for the Post Office I
sale or transfer of the Claimant's renovated part of my house into a shop and
business? (Yes/No, and if yes give date I Post Office. When my contract was
and brief details) terminated I had no more use for this so I
intended to return the room to residential
use.
I was suspended on 6 January 2010 but the
safe was not removed until 12 October 2010.
This prevented me from proceeding with my
intended renovation, to return the room to its
original state prior to the Post Office. I issued
proceedings against the Post Office in
respect of unpaid costs for the storage of its
equipment on my premises and the Post
Office paid these in full on 24 May 2011.
6. Civil and Criminal Proceedings
6.1. I Did the Defendant pursue recovery of No
any alleged shortfalls by civil
proceedings? (Yes/No, and if yes give
date and brief details)
6.2. I If yes, what was outcome of Nia
proceedings? (Settled, Judgment for
Claimant, Judgment for Defendant,
currently stayed)
Please give date and brief details.
6.3. I Did the Defendant pursue any criminal No
proceedings against the Claimant?
(Yes/No)
6.4. I If yes, specify (with dates): Nia
(a) charges (Theft, False Accounting,
and any other charges);
Ref: ER/OR/GC/2113848/1 1 127 C11/6/165
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(b) outcome (guilty after contested
trial, acquitted after contested
trial, guilty plea, not pursued).
6.5. I Has any conviction been referred to the Nia
Criminal Case Review Commission or is
the subject of any appeal? (Yes/No)
7. Nature of claims pursued
In this section, indicate whether the Claimant relies on generic Particulars of Claim in respect of the
types of claim identified (in each case, Yes/No).
7.1. I Contract, tort & fiduciary duty
(i) Training Yes
(ii) Support Yes
(iii) I Availability of transactional information Yes
(iv) I Execution / reconciling transactions Yes
(v) Inappropriate attribution of alleged Yes
shortfalls
(vi) I Demands for payment Yes
(vii) I Investigation Yes
(viii) I Suspension Yes
(ix) I Termination Yes
(x) Pressure to resign No
Ref: ER/OR/GC/2113848/1 12 128 C11/6/166
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(xi) I Impeding sale / transfer Yes
(xii) I Concealment Yes.
I believe Post Office concealed the true
nature and details of the shortfalls.
(xiii) I Breaches of overarching duties Yes
7.2. I Harassment Yes
7.3. I Deceit Yes, as I was led to believe that I had no
alternative but to pay the shortfalls and I
believed that a thorough investigation had
determined that payment was due.
7.4. I Malicious Prosecution No
7.5. I Unjust Enrichment Yes
8. Nature of claims for loss
8.1. I Repayment of alleged shortfalls (Yes/No I Pending access to full transaction and
and amount) account records from Horizon, I cannot
estimate how much I repaid to make good
alleged shortfalls.
Although it was alleged in the audit that I
repaid a certain amount to the Post Office as
a settlement, I have no knowledge of this and
would require evidence from the Post Office
to substantiate this alleged settlement.
8.2. I Loss of investment (Yes/No, and Yes, I lost the value of the business,
approximate value, subject to expert
evidence) I spent approximately £30,000 renovating
my premises so that the Post Office could be
installed. I also spent between £3,000 and
£5,000 towards the security screens, which
the Post Office also contributed to. I paid
£350 to convert the branch back into
residential use.
Ref: ER/OR/GC/2113848/1 13 129 C11/6/167
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When I opened the branch I also ran a small
side line. I sold handmade items, made by
local residents of the village and the branch
also was a local collection point for a dry-
cleaning company. The gross income for the
business was approximately £50 per week. It
was impossible to operate the shop without
the Post Office so I lost this income when the
Post Office was closed.
My branch had been considered for network
transformation closure and compensation.
Post Office may have terminated my contract
in order to avoid making a payment to me for
closing my branch under the scheme. On the
basis that I was appointed in November
2000, my redundancy payment would have
been three years at approx £10,000, total
£30,000 based on my average annual
income. However I do not consider this to be
an accurate reflection of my true investment
loss as I anticipated running the Post Office
for many years and I believe that my loss is
higher than this.
8.3. I Loss of earnings during suspension £900, this is in respect of my net income for
(approximate value and brief details) the 6 weeks that I was suspended for.
8.4. I Loss of earnings for failure to give notice I £1,950, this is in respect of my net income for
(approximate value) the 3 month notice period that was not
honoured.
8.5. I Loss of earnings post termination (period I N/A
claimed and approximate value) [If not
already dealt with at 8.2 above]
8.6. I Stigma and/or reputational damage There was a lot of gossip in the village when
(Yes/No and brief details) the branch was closed. I heard rumours that
said that I had stolen a quarter of a million
pounds. The Post Office also had a letter
printed in our local ‘Life’ magazine claiming
that I had resigned. An employee of the Post
Office had emailed a local resident informing
Ref: ER/OR/GC/2113848/1 14 130 C11/6/168
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him that I had resigned. This made people
think that I had abandoned the Post Office
which caused people to have a bad
perception about me in the community. There
had been a Post Office in my village for many
years before I became subpostmistress, so it
was something that the community had
become dependent on.
I had been selected as Prospective
Parliamentary Candidate for the 2010
General Election for the i
resigned from the position
ill, and because I did not want any untoward
publicity for myself or the party. I had been
supporting the party for nearly 20 years and
withdrawing from this position was a
significant personal setback for me.
8.7. I Personal Injury (Yes/No and brief details, I I suffered significantly from stress, anxiety,
subject to expert evidence) insomnia, depressionand lack of appetite
from the time that the shortfalls began
throughout the terminati i igati
8.8. I Losses related to bankruptcy/other No
insolvency procedures (Yes/No and brief
details)
8.9. I Losses related to prosecution (Yes/No No
and brief details)
8.10. I Any other loss not covered above Any further losses found to have been
(identify category and provide, brief suffered following disclosure and expert
details and amount). quantum evidence.
I have travel expenses from attending
interviews, and appeals with the Post Office.
There were 2 meetings in Cambridge and 1
in Peterborough. This meant covering
approximately 170 miles.
Ref: ER/OR/GC/2113848/1 15 131 C11/6/169
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IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE Claim No. HQ17X012637
QUEEN’S BENCH DIVISION
THE POST OFFICE GROUP LITIGATION
BETWEEN:
ALAN BATES & OTHERS
Claimants
~and—
POST OFFICE LIMITED
Defendant
SCHEDULE OF INFORMATION
1. Claimant & Branch Details
1.1. I Name [ANONYMITY ORDER I
1.2. I Home address
1.3. I Branch address
1.4. I Subpostmaster (Yes / No, if No give —_. I Yes, Subpostmaster
details, e.g. Crown Office Employee,
guarantor of Franchisee)
1.5. I Date and form of any contract entered Pending access to any contractual
into with Post Office documents and records that Post Office may
hold, my recollections are as follows:
I don't remember exactly what I signed but I
know I signed some documents on or around
July 2000. I no longer have a copy of these
documents.
1
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1.6. I Start date of appointment/engagement 20/07/2000
1.7. I End date of appointment/engagement 18/05/2016
I wasn’t working the post office counter in last
2 or 3 years due to an accident. My wife was
running the counter on a daily basis,
although I still carried out the balances and
management of the Post Office.
1.8. I Currently employed / engaged? (Yes/No) I No
1.9. I Lived in linked residential premises? Yes
(Yes/No)
1.10. I Employed assistants? (Yes/No, and if Yes — 2/3 part time staff.
yes identify number as at date of
termination of appointment)
1.11. I Operated a retail business from same Yes, I ran a small retail business selling
premises (Yes/No) greetings cards, stationary, toys etc. The
business only made around £200 per week.
2. Training and Support
2.1. I Received initial training from Defendant I Pending access to any training records that
re: Horizon when introduced in Post Office may hold, my recollections are as
1999/2000 (Yes/No) follows:
When we first bought the post office in July
2000, Horizon had not yet been rolled out to
our branch; it was introduced in the
November of that year.
Horizon at this time was very basic, all it
really did was replace desktop calculators. It
just meant instead of using manual
spreadsheets, you recoded everything
through the system but a lot of processes
were still done manually, for example
pensions and benefits.
I had one day of training in a hotel
BJW/2122691/1
134
C11/6/172
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somewhere in outer Leeds and three days
with an instructor who came into branch. The
training came with a lot of manuals which
were too complicated to read. I was very
conversant with computers having used them
since the 1970s but even I found the
manuals complicated. The system itself was
crude and basic.
I remember leaving the training feeling the
trainers were inadequate as when I had to
pass along the knowledge to my wife and
Staff I struggled.
2.2. I Received initial training from Defendant I N/A
re: Horizon when took up position?
(Yes/No, and if yes give date and brief
details of any training said to have been
inadequate or inappropriate)
2.3. I Received any further training from Pending access to any training records that
Defendant re: Horizon? (Yes/No, and if I Post Office may hold, my recollections are as
yes give date and brief details of any follows:
training said to have been inadequate or . 7 I
inappropriate) When “Horizon 2” was introduced, we had a
few hours of training at a hotel. My wife
attended the training as well as a couple of
the staff. We came away from the training
more confused; they were not qualified to be
trainers.
In general it seemed that Regional Network
Managers, who were not “trainers” were
more on hand to help than the trainers were.
The Regional Network Managers didn’t know
any more than the subpostmaster did, but
they would try and help as a favour.
My reflections are that the whole training
program was flawed and inadequate.
2.4. I Contacted Helpline to seek advice re: Pending access to any helpline call logs that
Horizon and/or alleged shortfalls? Post Office may hold, my recollections are as
(Yes/No, and if yes give approximate follows:
date and brief details of any advice and
3
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responses said to have been inadequate
or inappropriate)
I estimate that I contacted the Helpline more
than 5 times per week with regard to
problems relating to alleged shortfalls and /or
balancing.
Overall I had negative experiences. They
could create more problems than they could
solve for me.
It was like phoning a call centre: being
transferred, being put on hold, they were
going through a script, “is it plugged in”, “is it
dusty’, it was manned by inexperienced call
centre people, not technicians.
As I mentioned, the Helpline could actually
make situations worse. You could have a
loss and the Helpline would actually make it
double by giving you wrong information about
the accounting processes they told you to
follow, which did not make sense.
3. Apparent or Alleged Shortfalls
3.1. I For each apparent or alleged shortfall Pending access to full transaction and
attributed by the Defendant to the account records from Horizon, I am only able
Claimant and in relation to which to give approximate figures, although I do
complaint is made, specify: have a clear recollection of payments having
been made by me.
(a) Amount(s):
(b) Date(s): ; I would estimate that throughout my position
(c) pai a, the Claimant to the I in the branch, I paid, or Post Office deducted
opevinend (Yes/No, and dates many thousands of pounds, but I cannot
(d) How did the Claimant treat the I ‘Call exactly how much.
own in the accounts Shortfalls under £100
Yes
Adopting the paragraph numbering in the
question:
(a) The amount varied; often there were
shortfalls of, £10, £20, £30, £40, £50
pounds etc.
(b) Over the 16 years of my tenure.
4
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136
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(c) Yes, I paid back the money myself
out of money I took from the retail
side of my business. I kept a cash
box behind the counter and the
money came out of there.
(d) I paid back the shortfalls myself and
balanced the accounts. I expected the
amounts to come back as credits but
they never did.
Sometimes the discrepancy in the
morning would be different to what it
had been the previous night; I knew
something was wrong because this
could not be possible.
Shortfalls over £100
Yes
Adopting the paragraph numbering in the
question:
(a) The amounts varied, I have specific
recollections of a shortfall of £1200
and another of £2500.
(b) The shortfalls were revealed on
balance nights.
(c) I paid in full out of my own money.
(d) I checked back through my records
and transaction history. I called the
Helpline. Normally, when the amounts
were large I paid by cheque or settled
centrally and the money was
deducted at source from my salary. In
respect of the £1200 and the £2500, I
paid this back monthly from my
salary.
I expected the large amounts to come
to come back as transaction
corrections but they never did.
I wasn’t able to go back through the
system to check, so it wasn’t possible
BJW/2122691/1
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to do your own audit. You could not
run a transaction log. I have spent
hours looking at rolls of paper looking
for what could be a mistake.
4. Audit and Investigation
4.1. I Did the Defendant conduct one or more I I can remember the audits taking place,
audits of the branch prior to termination? I however, in relation to specific dates, I will
(Yes/No, and if yes give date and brief require access to Post Office’s audit records.
details) In the meantime, I can give approximate
details as follows:
The audits were always done on a Thursday
morning. I had a few audits over my time in
the branch but they were always fine, no
problems. I was only picked up on small
things such as keeping keys in safe.
I requested audits when I had large
shrotages and Post Office Ltd were not
prepared to do it. Post Office Ltd said I would
have to pay for an audit if I wanted one. The
auditors were ex Crown Post Office workers.
They were not proper qualified auditors.
4.2. I Was there an investigation carried out by I I have seen no evidence of any adequate
the Defendant relating to alleged investigation.
shortfalls? (Yes/No, and if yes give date
and brief details of any investigation(s) in
relation to which the Claimant raises a
complaint)
5. Suspension and Termination
5.1. I Was the Claimant suspended for a No
reason related to alleged shortfalls?
(Yes/No, and if yes give date and brief
details of any suspensions in relation
6
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138
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which the Claimant raises a complaint)
5.2. I If the Claimant was suspended: N/A
(a) Was the branch closed by the
Defendant? (Yes/No, and if yes
give date)
(b) Was a temporary Subpostmaster
appointed by the Defendant?
(Yes/No, and if yes give date)
(c) Was the Claimant prevented from
accessing records within the
branch? (Yes/No, and if yes give
date and brief details)
5.3. I How did the Claimant's appointment The branch was closed down by Network
end? (Terminated by Defendant / Transformation. The branch was chaged to a
Resigned) Post Office Local located within a Londis
shop.
I was paid £105,000 as compensation for
Network Transformation, based on best my
26 months of business out of the last three
years.
5.4, I If the Claimant's appointment was No, my appointment was ended by the
terminated by Defendant, was this for a Network Transformation.
reason related to alleged shortfalls?
(Yes/No)
Was that reason stated by Post Office?
(Yes/No)
5.5. I Did the Defendant give notice? (Yes/No, I N/A
and if yes, state period of notice)
5.6. I If the Claimant resigned, was this under I N/A
pressure from Defendant for a reason
related to alleged shortfalls (Yes/No, and
if yes give date and brief details)?
5.7. I Did the Defendant prevent or impede N/A
sale or transfer of the Claimant's
business? (Yes/No, and if yes give date
and brief details)
7
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Civil and Criminal Proceedings
6.1.
Did the Defendant pursue recovery of
any alleged shortfalls by civil
proceedings? (Yes/No, and if yes give
date and brief details)
No
6.2.
If yes, what was the outcome of the
proceedings? (Settled, Judgment for
Claimant, Judgment for Defendant,
currently stayed)
Please give date and brief details.
N/A
6.3.
Did the Defendant pursue any criminal
proceedings against the Claimant?
(Yes/No)
No
6.4.
If yes, specify (with dates):
(a) charges (Theft, False Accounting,
and any other charges);
(b) outcome (guilty after contested
trial, acquitted after contested
trial, guilty plea, not pursued).
N/A
6.5.
Has any conviction been referred to the
Criminal Case Review Commission or is
the subject of any appeal? (Yes/No)
N/A
Nature of claims pursued
In this section, indicate whether the Claimant relies on generic Particulars of Claim in respect of the
types of claim identified (in each case, Yes/No).
7.1. I Contract, tort & fiduciary duty
(i) Training Yes
(ii) Support Yes
8
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(iii) I Availability of transactional information Yes
(iv) I Execution / reconciling transactions Yes
(v) Inappropriate attribution of alleged Yes
shortfalls
(vi) I Demands for payment Yes
(vii) I Investigation Yes
(viii) I Suspension No
(ix) I Termination No
(x) I Pressure to resign No
(xi) I Impeding sale / transfer No
(xii) I Concealment Yes
(xiii) I Breaches of overarching duties Yes
7.2. I Harassment No
7.3. I Deceit Yes, as I was led to believe that I had no
alternative but to pay the shortfalls.
7.4. I Malicious Prosecution No
7.5. I Unjust Enrichment Yes
8. Nature of claims for loss
8.1. I Repayment of alleged shortfalls (Yes/No I Yes — See Section 3 for details.
and amount)
Plus all sums found to be repayable following
disclosure and upon investigation by the
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court.
8.2. I Loss of investment (Yes/No, and !lost value in the business but am unable
approximate value, subject to expert to quantify this without expert valuation
evidence) evidence.
I paid the following for the purchase of the
Post Office business: £200,000.
I paid the following for the purchase of stock:
around £2500.
8.3. I Loss of earnings during suspension N/A
(approximate value and brief details)
8.4. I Loss of earnings for failure to give notice I N/A
(approximate value)
8.5. I Loss of earnings post termination (period I If it were not for the events that occurred, my
claimed and approximate value) [If not future plans in my role were to keep the
already dealt with at 8.2 above] business until retirement, with the income
maintained at a decent level, before selling it:
however I was forced into closure...
8.6. I Stigma and/or reputational damage Yes, the community feels let down that "their"
(Yes/No and brief details) post office, which was the jewel of the village
has now gone.
8.7. I Personal Injury (Yes/No and brief details, I Yes, I felt and still feel personally damaged
subject to expert evidence) by Post Office Ltd which is not easy for me to
say because I don't like to admit that I have
weaknesses.
8.8. I Losses related to bankruptcy/other N/A
insolvency procedures (Yes/No and brief
details)
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8.9. I Losses related to prosecution (Yes/No N/A
and brief details)
8.10. I Any other loss not covered above Any further losses found to have been
(identify category and provide, brief suffered following disclosure and expert
details and amount). quantum evidence.
In the latter years the Post Office cut basic
salaries, in the last two years my wife and I
didn’t take any wages out ourselves. I had to
take out loans to prop the prop the post office
up and the shortages certainly played a part
in that as they put further strain on an already
diminishing business.
The information provided in this Schedule is true to the best of the Claimant’s knowledge
and belief on the basis of the information presently available to the Claimant. However,
the information is provided prior to disclosure by the Defendant, prior to any expert
evidence, and figures provided in relation to loss are approximations only.
I believe that the facts stated in this Schedule are true.
ANONYMITY ORDE!
Date: 04/09/2017
Freeths Reference: BJW/2122691/1
11
BJW/2122691/4
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IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE Claim No. HQ17X012637
QUEEN’S BENCH DIVISION
THE POST OFFICE GROUP LITIGATION
BETWEEN:
ALAN BATES & OTHERS
Claimants
- and —
POST OFFICE LIMITED
Defendant
SCHEDULE OF INFORMATION
4. Claimant & Branch Details
1.1. I Name Mrs Sonya Sultman
1.2. I Home address H I
1.3. I Branch address Horsley Hill Post Office
19 Horsley Hill Square
South Shields
Tyne and Wear
NE34 7HQ
1.4. I Subpostmaster (Yes / No, if No give Subpostmistress. I took over when my late
details, e.g. Crown Office Employee, husband, David, passed away in 2004.
guarantor of Franchisee)
1.5. I Date and form of any contract entered Pending access to any contractual
into with Post Office documents and records that Post Office may
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Ref: MB/2133860/1 1 C11/6/182
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hold, my recollections are as follows:
Due to the passage of time I cannot recall the
form of contractual document which I
received or whether/when I signed anything.
1.6. I Start date of appointment/engagement 2004
1.7. I End date of appointment/engagement I cannot recall the exact end date.
1.8. I Currently employed / engaged? (Yes/No) I No
1.9. I Lived in linked residential premises? No
(Yes/No)
1.10. I Employed assistants? (Yes/No, and if Yes, but I am unsure as to the exact number
yes identify number as at date of
termination of appointment)
1.11. I Operated a retail business from same Yes, I operated a newsagents
premises (Yes/No)
2. Training and Support
2.1. I Received initial training from Defendant Not applicable
re: Horizon when introduced in
1999/2000 (Yes/No)
2.2. I Received initial training from Defendant Pending access to any training records that
re: Horizon when took up position? Post Office may hold, my recollections are as
(Yes/No, and if yes give date and brief follows:
details of any training said to have been .
inadequate or inappropriate) Due to the passage of time I am unable to
recall any training which I may have
received.
2.3. I Received any further training from Pending access to any training records that
Defendant re: Horizon? (Yes/No, and if I Post Office may hold, my recollections are as
yes give date and brief details of any follows:
training said to have been inadequate or I
inappropriate) lam unable to recall whether I received any
further training.
2.4. I Contacted Helpline to seek advice re: Pending access to any helpline call logs that
Ref: MB/2133860/1 2
145
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Horizon and/or alleged shortfalls?
(Yes/No, and if yes give approximate
date and brief details of any advice and
responses said to have been inadequate
or inappropriate)
Post Office may hold, my recollections are as
follows:
lam unable to recall the dates on which I
contacted the Helpline. When I did call I was
told that the shortfalls could not be the fault
of the system, but must be caused by human
error. No genuine help was ever offered.
Apparent or Alleged Shortfalls
3.1.
For each apparent or alleged shortfall
attributed by the Defendant to the
Claimant and in relation to which
complaint is made, specify:
(a) Amount(s):
(b) Date(s):
(c) Paid by the Claimant to the
Defendant? (Yes/No, and dates
of payment).
(d) How did the Claimant treat the
above amounts in the accounts
and why?
Pending access to full transaction and
account records from Horizon, I am only able
to give approximate figures, although I do
have a clear recollection of payments having
been made by me.
I would estimate that throughout my position
in the branch, I paid (or Post Office
deducted) in excess of £60,000 from 2004.
Shortfalls under £100
I experienced smaller alleged shortfalls at the
end of almost every balancing period
Adopting the paragraph numbering in the
question:
(a) Several thousand pounds in total
(b) At the end of every balancing period
throughout my position in branch
(c) Yes, I put in my own money to ensure
the accounts balanced as soon as the
alleged shortfalls occurred
(d) Please see my answer to (c) above
Shortfalls over £100
Yes, I experienced many larger alleged
shortfalls throughout my position in branch. I
called the Helpline and was told to put my
own money in to balance the account.
Adopting the paragraph numbering in the
question:
Shortfall 1:
Ref: MB/2133860/1 3
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(a) £3,500
(b) I am unsure as to the exact date on
which the alleged shortfall occurred
(c) Yes, I paid the amount in full as soon
as I discovered it
(d) Please see my answer to (c) above
Audit and Investigation
44.
Did the Defendant conduct one or more
audits of the branch prior to termination?
(Yes/No, and if yes give date and brief
details)
Due to the passage of time I am unable to
recall whether my branch was ever audited.
4.2.
Was there an investigation carried out by
the Defendant relating to alleged
shortfalls? (Yes/No, and if yes give date
and brief details of any investigation(s) in
relation to which the Claimant raises a
complaint)
I have seen no evidence of any adequate
investigation.
Suspension and Termination
5.1.
Was the Claimant suspended for a
reason related to alleged shortfalls?
(Yes/No, and if yes give date and brief
details of any suspensions in relation
which the Claimant raises a complaint)
No
5.2.
If the Claimant was suspended:
(a) Was the branch closed by the
Defendant? (Yes/No, and if yes
give date)
(b) Was a temporary Subpostmaster
appointed by the Defendant?
(Yes/No, and if yes give date)
(c) Was the Claimant prevented from
accessing records within the
branch? (Yes/No, and if yes give
date and brief details)
N/A
Ref: MB/2133860/1 4
147
116/185
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5.3.
How did the Claimant’s appointment
end? (Terminated by Defendant /
Resigned)
I sold the branch.
5.4,
If the Claimant's appointment was
terminated by Defendant, was this for a
reason related to alleged shortfalls?
(Yes/No)
Was that reason stated by Post Office?
(Yes/No)
N/A
5.5.
Did the Defendant give notice? (Yes/No,
and if yes, state period of notice)
N/A
5.6.
If the Claimant resigned, was this under
pressure from Defendant for a reason
related to alleged shortfalls (Yes/No, and
if yes give date and brief details)?
N/A
5.7.
Did the Defendant prevent or impede
sale or transfer of the Claimant's
business? (Yes/No, and if yes give date
and brief details)
No
Civil and Criminal Proceedings
6.1.
Did the Defendant pursue recovery of
any alleged shortfalls by civil
proceedings? (Yes/No, and if yes give
date and brief details)
No
6.2.
If yes, what was the outcome of the
proceedings? (Settled, Judgment for
Claimant, Judgment for Defendant,
currently stayed)
Please give date and brief details.
N/A
6.3.
Did the Defendant pursue any criminal
proceedings against the Claimant?
(Yes/No)
No
6.4.
If yes, specify (with dates):
N/A
Ref: MB/2133860/1 5
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(a) charges (Theft, False Accounting,
and any other charges);
(b) outcome (guilty after contested
trial, acquitted after contested
trial, guilty plea, not pursued).
6.5.
Has any conviction been referred to the
Criminal Case Review Commission or is
the subject of any appeal? (Yes/No)
N/A
Nature of claims pursued
In this section, indicate whether the Claimant relies on generic Particulars of Claim in respect of the
types of claim identified (in each case, Yes/No).
7.1. I Contract, tort & fiduciary duty
(i) Training No
(ii) I Support Yes
(iii) I Availability of transactional information Yes
(iv) I Execution / reconciling transactions Yes
(v) Inappropriate attribution of alleged Yes
shortfalls
(vi) I Demands for payment Yes, as per 3.1 above
(vii) I Investigation Yes
(viii) I Suspension No
(ix) I Termination No
(x) I Pressure to resign No
(xi) I Impeding sale / transfer No
Ref: MB/2133860/1 6
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(xii) I Concealment Yes
(xiii) I Breaches of overarching duties Yes
7.2. I Harassment No
7.3. I Deceit Yes, as I was led to believe that I had no
alternative but to pay the shortfalls and I
believed that a thorough and fair
investigation had determined that payment
was due.
7.4. I Malicious Prosecution No
7.5. I Unjust Enrichment Yes
8. Nature of claims for loss
8.1. I Repayment of alleged shortfalls (Yes/No I Yes, in excess of £60,000
and amount)
Plus all sums found to be repayable following
disclosure and upon investigation by the
court.
8.2. I Loss of investment (Yes/No, and No
approximate value, subject to expert
evidence)
8.3. I Loss of earnings during suspension No
(approximate value and brief details)
8.4. I Loss of earnings for failure to give notice I No
(approximate value)
8.5. I Loss of earnings post termination (period I No
claimed and approximate value) [If not
already dealt with at 8.2 above]
8.6. I Stigma and/or reputational damage No
(Yes/No and brief details)
Ref: MB/2133860/1 7
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8.7. I Personal Injury (Yes/No and brief details, I Yes, I found the situation intensely stressful
subject to expert evidence) and my mental and physical wellbeing
suffered.
8.8. I Losses related to bankruptcy/other No
insolvency procedures (Yes/No and brief
details)
8.9. I Losses related to prosecution (Yes/No No
and brief details)
8.10. I Any other loss not covered above Any further losses found to have been
(identify category and provide, brief
details and amount).
suffered following disclosure and expert
quantum evidence.
Ref: MB/2133860/1 8
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The information provided in this Schedule is true to the best of the Claimant's knowledge
and belief on the basis of the information presently available to the Claimant. However,
the information is provided prior to disclosure by the Defendant, prior to any expert
evidence, and figures provided in relation to loss are approximations only.
I believe that the facts stated in this Schedule are true.
Mrs Sonya Sultman
Date: 20(C% ( 20r)
Freeths Reference: MB/2133860/1
152
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FREETHS
Andrew Parsons
Bond Dickinson LLP
DX38517 Southampton 3
itchboal
Email: james.hartley/
20 September 2017
SECOND LETTER
By email only: andrew.parsons_
Our Ref: JXH/1684/IT106/2/KL
Dear Sirs
BATES & OTHERS v POST OFFICE LIMITED - GROUP ACTION
CLAIM NO: HQ16X01238
SCHEDULES OF INFORMATION
We write in response to your third letter of 1 September 2017.
Your letter of 1 September 2017 expressed concerns, across 10 pages, about the Schedules of
Information (SOls) provided to you on 20 June 2017.
Your approach and professed concerns about the SOls are flawed. The purpose of SOls in Group
Litigation is to provide a minimum amount of information about all Claimants who are part of the
Claimant cohort. It is not necessary or proportionate for all claims in the Group to be worked up to
the level of detail that would be provided in a unitary action — that is expressly not the point of
Group Litigation, not what is intended by the SOI process, nor what was intended in this case. In
fact, the SOls which have been provided in this case are very substantially more detailed than
would normally be expected in Group Litigation. Your clients are much better informed about the
circumstances of individual claimants than a Defendant to Group Litigation would normally be at
this stage.
The process of Lead Case selection, which we have proposed at paragraph 2 of the directions we
sent to you on 6 July 2017 will permit further information to be provided in respect of cases that are
identified as Lead Cases. As we have said many times before, it is only Lead Cases that will in
due course have fully particularised individual Particulars of Claim.
Freeths LLP sa linited ability partnership, registered in England and Wales, parbeship number OC304688, Registered Office: Cumberland Cou, 80 Mount Street, Notfngham NG1 BH
‘Authorised and regulated by te Salictors Regulation Authony. Ata ist ofthe members cf Frees LLP is avaiable for Ispecten atthe registered oe,
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20 September 2017
Second Letter
Page 2
It is completely disproportionate for you to cherry pick individual queries and complaints, across the
cohort of Claimant SOls. Your approach is costly and wasteful, and undermines the efficiencies
that are intended by the Group Litigation process.
What you purport to require of us, by way of detailed clarification of SOls for hundreds of individual
Claimants, is in stark contrast to the approach Post Office has adopted in its Generic Defence and
refusal to respond to many of our Requests for Information. Moreover, as to proportionality, it is
proportionate for Post Office to provide fundamental information in its Generic Defence and in
response to RFls, when those answers affect hundreds of Claimants; it is not proportionate to
criticise individual SOls as you have, nor to make extravagant wider criticisms on the basis of
alleged lack of particularity. Less still is it reasonable or proportionate to make such criticisms on
bases which are flawed or wholly misconceived, as we further address below.
We reject the criticisms of the process, and our firm, which are entirely misplaced. To the extent
there are minor errors or differences in approach in or between individual SOls, these are to be
expected in an exercise of this scale.
We respond shortly to each the headline points you raise below, but make clear that we do not
intend to do this again, and this should not been seen as an open door to repeated rounds of
further minor criticisms of individual SOls. We do this to make clear that not only is Post Office’s
approach disproportionate and ill-suited to proceedings managed under a GLO, but that the
criticisms are, in many respects, misplaced or misconceived.
It will therefore be apparent that we neither accept your approach nor your required actions.
However, by way of sensible compromise, we accept that if you have legitimate queries arising on
individual SOls which are being considered as potential Lead Cases from the initial pool, sensible
provisions can be built into the process of Lead Case selection, to cater for any necessary
corrections or clarifications of information required in the SOls to be given for that purpose. We
therefore propose amending paragraph 2 of the draft directions sent to you on 6 July 2017, to
insert a new sub-paragraph (c) as follows:
LEAD CASES
2. In respect of the selection of Lead Cases: -
a. By [date], the Claimants’ solicitors and the Defendant’s solicitors shall each select
[20] individual claims which will together form the pool of [40] Claimants from which
Lead Cases will be selected.
b. By [date], the parties do provide standard disclosure of documents relating to the
pool of Claimants identified above.
c. By [date], the Defendant may request corrections or clarifications of any information
required in the SOls of individual Claimants in the pool at (a) above, and, by [date],
the Claimants will respond.
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20 September 2017
Second Letter
Page 3
d. By [date], the parties do seek to agree [16] Lead Cases from the pool of Claimants
aforesaid. Any disagreement on any question of lead case selection shall be
determined at the next CMC.
e. Further directions in relation to Lead Cases to be given at the next CMC.
We now turn to respond briefly to each the headline criticisms which you raise in your letter, for
convenience, in the table below.
Headline Summary Response
Criticism
Q 1.3. Group The Claimants have identified on the Group Register all branches at which they
Register and SOI worked (as potentially relevant for training records etc). The SOls make clear the
are in some cases _I branch in respect of which alleged shortfalls arose and which form the substance of
not consistent re: the claim. The “problem” you have identified is illusory.
branch
Q1.5 Disclosed We do not know if Post Office has provided full disclosure of contractual records,
individual contracts I and the qualified wording reflects the fact that the SOls are signed by a statement
not taken into of truth: most Claimants do not specifically recall the precise contractual position. In
account fact, limited individual contractual documentation has been disclosed by Post Office
for the original 198 Claimants (and none for the later Claimants). Around 60% of
the documents disclosed in this category are simply acknowledgement slips or
acknowledgements of appointment, which do not specify the version or variation
and do not annex a full copy of the relevant contractual terms. If there are individual
cases in which relevant documents have been overlooked in the preparation of
SOls this can be addressed, but evidently this is information which Post Office has
available.
Q1.7 and Q1.8 end I Some Claimants are only able to give a month, not a specific date. Your criticism is
date of absurd: Post Office could of course check its own records on this point. As to
appointments not I continued engagement, if you review the SOI of Aslam Ramtoola (144) fully it is
provided or not obvious what the position is in his case and there is no inconsistency. Mr Rudkin
clear (156) responded erroneously to the question as to whether he was currently
employed in any capacity, and this can be simply corrected.
Q2.2 and Q2.3 There is no foundation for this criticism. Details are given in many SOls as to why
training dates and I Claimants consider their training inadequate, but this is fundamentally a generic
details inadequate I issue pleaded in the Generic Particulars of Claim. Disclosure and (potentially)
expert evidence will be required on this issue. As to dates of training, of course
Q2.4 details of most Claimants don’t recall this, but the way in which section 2.2 is drafted itself
helpline advice identifies the approximate date i.e. whether training when Horizon was installed, or
inadequate when first taking up appointment. The same points arise in relation to helpline
advice — Claimants cannot be expected to remember the dates of individual calls.
The SOls are not intended to stand as individual Particulars of Claim as to specific
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20 September 2017
Second Letter
Page 4
Headline Summary Response
Criticism
training or advice given on the Helpline (or in other respects) as pointed out at the
GLO hearing before the Senior Master — this is a separate stage in the process
which will be completed for a much smaller number of the Claimant group, after
disclosure. Post Office is in a much better position than the Claimants to identify
relevant dates and details, as it is able to access Helpline records and training
records. In context, these criticisms of the SOls are unfair and misplaced.
Q3.2(d) accounting I Similar points arise as above. Not all Claimants are able to give this information,
for shortfalls not and those that can recall have provided sufficient details at this stage. As above, it
sufficiently is likely that following disclosure in individual cases which are being considered as
explained or have been selected as Lead Cases, further details can be provided. The
purpose of section 3.1 of the SOI, as ventilated at the GLO hearing, was to help
categorise Claimants, not to provide full particulars of each individual case. Post
Office needs to recognise that in this process there is some uncertainty on both
sides as to the full extent of individual cases and circumstances, but not all cases
will be fully particularised in the way Post Office seems to expect, because this
process is being managed as Group Litigation.
Q4.2 Claimants Many Claimants do not know if an investigation was carried out. Indeed, this
don’t make clear reflects the more general asymmetry of information between them and Post Office.
whether an In those cases, Claimants have sensibly (and rightly) answered this question to that
investigation was I effect: they cannot just give a yes/no answer as you suggest. The answers given
undertaken by fairly reflect the position of each Claimant, e.g. those that were told Post Office
Post Office would look into a shortfall but in fact saw no evidence of this actually happening. Of
course Post Office will always know if an investigation was carried out, will have
kept relevant records of such investigations and will provide them on disclosure.
This is yet another example of Post Office criticising Claimants for not providing
information which is in fact in Post Office’s knowledge and, understandably, not
known by Claimants. Your suggestion that each Claimant should identify what was
said by them, by whom and in what context is completely wrong. These are
matters which would be appropriate for individual Particulars of Claim in Lead
Cases, not SOls for all Claimants.
Q5.6 notice Of the two examples you give, in Mr Rudkin’s case, it is unclear whether Post Office
answers not clear I gave notice (as is reflected in the SOI), and in Mr Trousdale’s case, it is obvious
from the SOI that there was no notice. These minor criticisms are nit-picking,
unnecessary and inappropriate.
Q7.3 factual basis I Only a yes/no answer is required to this section of the SOI. No further details are
of deceit claim required to be identified. Section 7 of the SOI is designed to enable the parties to
insufficient identify how many Claimants are pursuing each cause of action. As repeatedly
explained above, full particulars of individual claims are not required at this stage.
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20 September 2017
Second Letter
Page 5
Section 8, We do not agree. Your extract from the transcript is selective; we refer you
quantum specifically to lines 1650 to 1654, as follows:
information
insufficient 1650. Mrde Garr Robinson QC: Could I... could I suggest that 8.2 does require, certainly requires
a date and brief details, we need to know what the investment was and how it was lost,
1651. Senior Master Fontaine : Well you need to know that in due course, you don’t nepd to know
it right now [don’t think.
1652. Mr de Garr Robinson QU: Well Master in order to make a decision about dicing and slicing
it would be helpful to have that sort of information at the next CMC.
1653. Senior Master Fontaine: Well [suppose brief details could encompass something like, Idon’t
know had to sell my house to pay off the, or sell a buy to let property to pay off whichever, I
mean it can only ... it need only be one sentence ..
1654. Mr Green QC: Yes,
This section was plainly intended to provide brief details of the types of losses
claimed. In the vast majority of cases specific amounts and details cannot be
provided — much of the detailed quantum information relating to shortfalls is held by
Post Office, and there will need to be expert evidence relating to quantum in most
cases. Where Claimants are not able to estimate (as in the examples you identify),
it is wrong to invite them to speculate.
We do not otherwise respond to the further specific quantum points which represent
a variation on the above theme, or are otherwise covered our observations above.
We repeat these sections of the SOls are not intended to be, nor could they
sensibly be, individual schedules of loss.
Conclusion
We have proposed a variation in the directions that we suggested to you in our letter of 6 July
2017. In other correspondence, we have invited your co-operation in seeking to agree those
directions and would ask you to confirm that what we have proposed in respect of Lead Case
selection is agreed.
Yours faithfully
Pp, 2
(aosns kf
Freeths LLP
Please respond by e-mail where possible
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www.bonddickinson.com
43 October 2016 Bond Dickinson LLP
Oceana House
39-49 Commercial Road
For the Attention of Mr J Hartley SorscA
Freeths LLP —y
Floor 3 ri GRO I
100 Wellington Street DX! YSBT7 SouThiaTrpton 3
Leeds
West Yorkshire
LS1 4LT
Second Letter
By email only
Sf
JXHI1684/2113618/1/KL
Email: james.hartley
Dear Sirs
Bates & Others —v- Post Office Limited
Claim Number: HQ16X01238
141 We write further to our letter of 31 August 2016, in particular section 4 which dealt with the GLO
to which we have not yet received a substantive response, your letter of 16 September 2016,
your letter of 6 October 2016 in relation to your client, Dr Kutianawala and your most recent letter
of 11 October 2016.
1.2 Although there are serious points of disagreement between our clients, we have always engaged
with you professionally and constructively. In our client's Letter of Response dated 28 July 2016
(Letter of Response), we offered to meet with you to discuss the general management of this
litigation. To date, you have not taken up that offer.
4.3 itis therefore regrettable that you have sought to accuse us in correspondence of acting
uncooperatively and seeking to focus on satellite issues rather than addressing the real issues in
this case. The issues which we have sought to address with you include security for costs,
governing law and limitation. These are not satellite issues, as you would seek to characterise
them, but are foundational and need to be understood so the parties can make informed case
management decisions.
1.4 By contrast, your clients have not provided any detailed particulars of the claims alleged against
our client (either in the Letter of Claim or in the significant subsequent correspondence you have
sent on specific cases). Further, neither you nor your clients have responded to our proposals on
the formulation of the GLO that we provided in July 2016: the GLO being the cornerstone of case
management in this litigation and despite us pressing for your input for two months now, you
have not engaged with this topic.
1.5 Nevertheless, in order to focus on the substance of this litigation, rather than your conduct, in this
letter we address the outstanding substantive points, namely:
e Your response of 20 October 2016
* The GLO
* Security for Costs
* Access to Second Sight
Bond Dickinson LLP is a limited liability partnership registered in England and Wales under number OC317661. VAT registration number is
6B123393627. Registered office: 4 More London Riverside, London, SE1 2AU, where a list of members’ names is open to inspection. We use the
term partner to refer to a member of the LLP, or an employee or consultant who is of equivalent standing. Bond Dickinson LLP is authorised and
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4A_33788496_5
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. Claim Form application
. Other amendments to the Claim Form
. Governing law
. Disclosure
2. Your response on 20 October 2016
21 On the basis that your response will be substantive, genuinely address the points raised in our
Letter of Response, and set out in detail each of the claims raised by each of the Claimants and
the facts and matter they rely upon, our client was willing to agree to a deadline of 20 October
2016 for your substantive response to the issues in dispute (Letter of Reply).
2.2 Recently one of your clients, Dr Kutianawala, agreed to a Consent Order in which he was obliged
to provide full particulars of the grounds on which he would oppose an Order for Sale. Aithough
you provided some particulars in your letter of 6 October 2016, this information was far from
sufficient. For example:
2.2.1 Your referred to Dr Kutianawala’s "claim" against Post Office but provided no.
particulars of that claim (paragraph 2.4 of your letter).
2.2.2 You said that the Default Judgment against Dr Kutianawala should be set aside but set
out no grounds on which it should be set aside (paragraph 3.1).
2.2.3 You said that the settlement agreement signed by Dr Kutianawala (after he had
received legal advice) should be rescinded or set aside on the grounds of deceit, but
provided no particulars of the alleged deceit (paragraph 3.2). We note our comments
in paragraph 6.25 of our Letter of Response, which set out the requirements for
pleading a claim in deceit. Those requirements are not met by your letter of 6 October
2016.
23 We are concerned that the level of information provided regarding Dr Kutianawala's position may
be indicative of the level of information you intend to provide in respect of the other 198
Claimants' claims in your Letter of Reply. If so this would not be adequate for the reasons set out
at length in our Letter of Response.
24 Since your Letter of Reply will feed into matters to be discussed at the GLO hearing, and so as to
assist the parties to narrow the issues in dispute prior to this (for example, the format and
substance of Statements of Case), we hope that your Letter of Reply will, at a minimum:
2.4.1 Set out the common or related issues (of fact or law) between the Claimants to be
managed collectively and identify any features which may be grouped (i.e. criminal
convictions and those Claimants whose contracts were terminated more than 6 years
ago);
2.4.2 Identify and explain the various categories of claims which are being brought, the
elements of each of these categories, the Claimants which fall within each of these and
the factual basis of their claims;
2.4.3 Provide adequate information so as to allow Post Office to investigate each of the
claims brought by each Claimant;
244 Explain the grounds on which non-Postmasters (i.e. crown branch employees and
assistants) are bringing their claims and why their claims are appropriate to be brought
under the GLO; and
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25
2.6
3.1
3.2
3.3
3.4
3.5
3.6
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2.4.5 Include adequate information so as to ascertain when the various causes of action
arose for each Claimant.
Despite having been instructed on this matter for at least 10 months (our client's first letter to you
being in December 2015), we have not yet been provided with particularisation of each of the
Claimants' claims. Only once this level of detail has been provided will the parties be able to
hopefully agree the scope of the GLO and, in particular, consider whether generic Particulars of
Claim (as you have proposed) would be suitable.
Please confirm that your Letter of Reply will address the above points, as we have previously
requested in our Letter of Response and letter of 18 August 2016.
GLO
In preparation for the GLO hearing which is now listed for 26 January 2017, please can you
respond to:
3.4.1 Our letter of 15 July 2016 regarding the GLO; and
3.1.2 The draft GLO enclosed with our client's Letter of Response.
Until you provide us with a response, we are unable to begin to work with you to narrow any
points in dispute. However, in the interest of progressing these discussions, we have set out
above the information and level of detail which we feel, as a minimum, should be included in your
Letter of Reply.
In particular, we note from the current draft GLO that "the Claimants shall file and serve Generic
Particulars of Claim" (section 30). No explanation has been provided by you to date as to what
these "generic" Particulars of Claim are expected to include (and what they would presumably
exclude) and how they would fit into a wider case management plan for this litigation. Having
been instructed for nearly a year, you must by now have a view on this topic.
In preparation for the GLO hearing, it will be necessary to consider whether generic Particulars of
Claim would be suitable. Due to the fact specific nature of each of the Claimants’ claims, it may,
for example, be necessary to produce individual Particulars of Claim for each Claimant or,
alternatively, to split the claim into categories with separate Particulars for each.
Some of the recent cases that we have been discussing in correspondence show the distinctive
difference between the cases and the possible need for full Particulars of Claim:
3.5.1 Mrs Stockdale was initially suspended and subsequently terminated as Postmistress of
her branch as a consequence of her failure to repay losses and her acknowledged
submission of false cash declarations. Throughout our correspondence you requested
a number of documents specific to Mrs Stockdale, demonstrating the highly individual
nature of each specific claim. Despite your repeated failure to provide any explanation
of events at Mrs Stockdale's branch, it is clear from that the specifics of each
Postmaster's branch and their conduct will need to be particularised in due course;
and
3.5.2 Dr Kutianawala is in a different position to Mrs Stockdale, having already had judgment
entered against him and then, following receipt of independent legal advice, having
entered into a settlement agreement to repay part of that judgment debt. For Dr
Kutianawala to even begin advancing a claim, he will first need to set out grounds for
setting aside the settlement agreement and judgment. There are also questions around
whether his case could be expediently advanced under a GLO given its particular
circumstances.
In your most recent letter, you make reference to "Lead Claimants". The possibility of identifying
lead claimants, and presumably therefore running a number of test cases, has never been raised
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previously by you, nor is it part of the GLO you are seeking, nor is it mentioned in the supporting
evidence to that application.
In our letter of 27 May 2016, we asked for you to set out your envisaged directions for cases
subject to the GLO. No clear statement of your intentions has ever been provided, though clearly
you have in mind the use of generic Particulars of Claim and Lead Claimants. We should be
grateful if this explanation is now provided.
As there are a number of different ways to proceed in relation to the GLO, Statements of Case
and future directions, it may be best to discuss these matters between us as soon as possible
and we repeat our offer to meet with you.
In the meantime, it would assist if draft generic Particulars of Claim could be shared with us so
that we may understand what you intend to be covered. We accept that these draft Particulars
will be just that, a draft, and that you shall have complete liberty to formally file different
Particulars.
Once we have a clearer understanding of your position in relation to the GLO, your response to
our previous letters regarding the GLO and you have addressed the above points, we will then be
able to determine what information may be needed in Schedule 3 to the draft GLO. Its seems to
us prudent for all parties to have a clearer understanding of how this litigation may be conducted
in the future, before making decisions on what evidence needs to be gathered from the parties.
We will nevertheless give this topic further thought pending your response.
Please confirm that you will address the above points in (or at the same time as) your Letter of
Reply (ie. by 20 October 2016).
Please provide draft generic Particulars of Claim by 28 October 2016. We have intentionally
proposed a date after 20 October so that you may first submit your Letter of Reply.
Security for Costs
We are currently reviewing the ATE policy you have provided and shall respond separately on
this matter.
Second Sight
Both parties agree that the Claimants should be able to consult Second Sight, subject to
adequate controls being in place to protect our client's privileged information held by Second
Sight.
So as to ensure that any privileged information which is held by Second Sight remains protected,
we propose that Second Sight, you (in your capacity as solicitors for the Claimants) and Post
Office agree a tripartite Protocol which sets out the terms of access to Second Sight. Please find
enclosed a draft Protocol for your review.
The Protocol draws a distinction between the provision of documents and information. Second
Sight has confirmed to Post Office that it has provided to Post Office all documents (both
hardcopy and electronic) which related to Post Office and the Mediation Scheme, and then
destroyed any remaining copies. As such, we would be concerned if Second Sight were able to
provide you with any documents. If you have previously sought to obtain any documents which
Second Sight had sight of, please now provide us with copies of such requests. Further, any
additional requests for information should be made through us.
Given the above, access to Second Sight should only relate to the recollections of the staff at
Second Sight. Essentially this is limited to their knowledge as witnesses.
There are certain topics that are likely to involve substantial amounts of legally privileged
material. There are also topics that may affect the privacy of individuals who are not parties to
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this litigation. The Protocol therefore prohibits discussion of these high risk areas. These areas
include:
4.5.1 Information concerning Post Office's criminal prosecutions against Claimants and
generally. Prior to establishment of the Mediation Scheme, Post Office provided
Second Sight with access to its internal legal files in relation to certain prosecutions,
under a condition of non-waiver of privilege. It will be near impossible for Second Sight
to filter privileged and non-privileged material during a discussion with your firm and
therefore this topic must not be discussed;
4.5.2 Information concerning previous civil proceedings against Claimants. For similar
reasons to above, this topic should not be discussed; and
4.5.3 Information relating to Postmasters who are not Claimants. As you will appreciate, this
information is sensitive to individuals who may not wish to be involved in this litigation.
It is also covered by confidentiality between Post Office and those individuals, as well
as statutory Data Protection safeguards. These Data Protection rules only permit Post
Office (and by proxy Second Sight) to release information for litigation purposes where
itis "necessary" to do so. If you wish to discuss individuals who are not Claimants with
Second Sight, please explain why that information is necessary and we will then seek
our client's consent.
The Protocol also provides a framework for addressing other related matters such as data
protection compliance, the sharing of information between Claimants, Second Sight's costs and
the inadvertent disclosure of privileged material.
You will note that we are not seeking to pre-approve any interaction with Second Sight, nor vet
the material they may provide to you. We are trusting your firm to comply fairly with the Protocol.
In order to ensure that the above limits are maintained, the Protocol provides that the
communications with Second Sight are only to be conducted by you (rather than via individual
Claimants), with a single point of contract at Second Sight. This single channel of communication
will help to ensure compliance with the Protocol. We note that you provided for something similar
in your recent letter where you sought permission to speak to lan Henderson.
We welcome your comments on the Protocol
Claim Form application
The sections which you have referred us to in McGee on Limitation Periods discuss the methods
by which parties can contract out of the statutory limitation period and be estopped from relying
on limitation defences. However, the issue we are discussing is the date upon which the claims
were brought and whether the parties can agree to a notional claim date of 3 August 2016 for all
new claims. The sections which you quote do not appear to deal with this issue. If we have
misunderstood, please clarify the relevance of these extracts.
Although you have not provided us with any assurance that your proposal is lawful, we suggest
that the parties adopt the following approach:
5.2.1 A draft Order is provided to Senior Master Fontaine setting a notional Claim date of 3
August 2016, along with short written submissions (e.g. one page) from both parties;
6.2.2 A request that Senior Master Fontaine decides on the basis of the papers whether she
is able to make the Order which is sought; and
5.2.3 In the event that Senior Master Fontaine feels unable to make such an Order, then the
application hearing should proceed.
Please find attached a revised draft Order for your review. Please provide any comments which
you may have on our proposal and the draft Order by 20 October 2016.
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So as to avoid this issue re-occurring in the future, we ask you, again, to confirm that if there are
any further new Claimants, you will issue a new Claim Form(s) for them and will not seek to
further amend the existing Claim Form.
Other amendments to Claim Form
Claims brought by companies
You have confirmed that the amendment to the Claim Form, whereby a reference to Claimant
“companies” was added, was because some of the Claimants have traded through companies.
However, to date, none of the Claimants are companies.
In the circumstances where the principal contracting party with Post Office is a company, the
claim against Post Office should be brought by the company rather than the Postmaster in their
individual capacity. By way of example, you say in your letter of 8 September 2016 that Dr
Kutianawala contracts with Post Office via FSK Enterprises Limited, yet his claim has been
brought by Dr Kutianawala in his individual capacity
It appears that you may have pieaded inaccurate claims, and signed a statement of truth to this
effect, as the correct party to the litigation was known to be a company but joined to the
proceedings as an individual.
Please provide your proposals for amending the Claim Form to address this issue (in the case of
Dr Kutianawala and any others) and confirmation of when you propose to do so.
Alternatively, if you are not proposing to amend the Claim Form further, it would appear that the
reference to "companies" has been included in the expectation of later adding more Claimants
who may be companies to this litigation. We must therefore insist that this will not happen and
that you provide the confirmation sought in paragraph 5.4 above.
Network Reimbursement
Thank you for explaining what was meant by "capital payment entitlements payable by the
Defendant upon branch closures". We note that the claim which relates to the Network
Reimbursement has not to date been discussed in pre-action correspondence. This appears to
be a new category of claim, the formal basis for and legal ramifications of which are completely
unknown to Post Office.
Please confirm that you will provide full details of this claim in your Letter of Reply.
Governing Law
We note your position that English law is the applicable law for both the contractual and non-
contractual causes of actions in these proceedings. Our client reserves its position in respect of
this matter since without full particularisation of each of the Claimants’ claims it is not possible to
ascertain where the causes of action originated and any affect this may have on governing law.
This is another reason why it is critical that you provide proper details in your Letter of Reply of
the claims being advanced.
Disclosure
We refer to your second letter of 25 August 2016 in relation to disclosure.
Documents provided to date
On 31 August 2016, we provided you with 45 documents (totalling 592 pages) you had
requested, which related to different categories of your requests. In addition to these documents,
many documents were shared with your clients throughout the Complaints Review and Mediation
Scheme (which was hundreds of pages of documents in most cases). We anticipate that those
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Claimants will therefore have documents relevant to your requests and which you would be able
to obtain from them. Our client has therefore already provided significant pre-action disclosure.
Your requests
As we have said previously, your requests are nothing more than a fishing expedition. Your most
recent letter on this subject repeats the requests with little attempt made to (i) explain why the
documents are relevant or are needed at this stage of the litigation process or (ii) narrow the
requests.
Where possible, we have sought to identify further documents in light of the few clarifications you
have provided. In the main, however, your requests remain disproportionate and unjustified
You are effectively seeking to bring forward disclosure in these proceedings before you have
pleaded out your clients’ claims.
Our principle objection to your requests is that they would put our client to significant cost
because the documents requested do not exist in discrete, easily accessible locations. For
example, in relation to your request 17 for "Notes of audits and investigations...", there are
several teams in different locations that deal with audits and investigations, including audit,
security and the contract teams. These teams are based across the country, with some team
members working remotely. There is support for these teams based in London and Chesterfield,
with further off-site archiving facilities for closed files. Consequently, this information is not easily
accessible in one location.
We set out below a description of Post Office's organisational structure in order to show that
locating the documents you have sought would require an extensive disclosure exercise. We
anticipate that the cost of this exercise would run into the hundreds of thousands of pounds (if not
more). Ata time when your clients have not quantified their claims and are refusing to re-issue a
Claim Form in order to remedy a limitation issue on the grounds that it would cost them a further
£10,000, this disclosure exercise is clearly disproportionate.
Post Office's organisational structure
As many of your clients will be aware, Post Office Limited and Royal Mail Group Limited (Royal
Mail) became separate companies in April 2012. This split led to significant changes to the
structure of Post Office and how it was run. We note that you seek historical documents dating
back 18 years, to 1998. It is self-evident that in this time, responsibilities will have moved
between different teams and a full mapping exercise will be needed to ascertain where
documents have been held in this period.
Currently, there are many different teams that are involved in the running of branches that also
diverge, depending on whether the branch is run by agents or Post Office employees. Teams
include those related to security, audit, remuneration, field support, NBSC, sales, training, anti-
money laundering, recruitment, HR, agent contractual support, and different commercial and
support teams for the various products offered across Post Office's network. It is estimated that
at least dozens, if not hundreds, of employees are currently engaged by these teams (and
historically there will have been many more). There are therefore many different teams and
people that may have held / hold the information you seek.
Post Office also holds documents in several different office locations, in off-site storage and in
branches. Consequently, the documents that you seek are held in many different physical
locations.
In addition to the normal IT development that any organisation experiences, since the split with
Royal Mail, there have also been changes to Post Office's IT services. Relevant documents are
held in several different databases and software solutions, which have changed during the time
period relevant to this matter. This will include different email systems and archiving for those
emails, individuals’ laptop hard drives where documents are stored (not all of whom share their
documents over any network), different networked drives and cloud storage locations, database
systems such as SAP and other specialised software. Post Office has several third party
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suppliers of IT software and support beyond just Fujitsu, all of which will need to be liaised with to
locate the information sought. These suppliers are also likely to charge Post Office for
conducting a mass search and retrieval of information in the form that you are seeking.
Therefore, in order to locate the documents you seek at this early stage, a full disclosure exercise
will be required to scope the document holders, locations of documents and how they are stored.
Forensic teams will then be needed, again, at a cost, to retrieve the documents so as to preserve
the metadata.
We anticipate, based on our experiences in the Mediation Scheme, that this exercise could return
hundreds of thousands, if not millions of documents. For example, Post Office has made
available to the CCRC approximately a quarter of a million documents and these documents
were only generated by Post Office's security team. The documents will therefore need to be
keyword searched in order to identify potentially relevant material. To do this would require Post
Office to use, at a cost, an e-disclosure software solution.
Following this, a manual review will still be required in order to filter out inter alia privileged
material and confidential yet irrelevant material (e.g. material related to Postmasters who are not
part of the Group Action). This would require a team of paralegals to be engaged at considerable
cost, performing a review that may take weeks, if not months
Such an exercise may need to be repeated once your clients’ claims are pleaded and full
disclosure is ordered.
As can be seen from above, conducting this work now is therefore not cost proportionate (again
noting that you have not in any way sought to quantify your clients’ claims) and nor in accordance
with the Overriding Objective.
Further disclosure
We have nevertheless, through appropriate endeavours, located additional documents for
disclosure. A full list of these documents, and line by line comments on your requests, is
enclosed.
If you wish to adopt a more co-operative approach by making more targeted requests for
documents, we will of course consider these.
We would however ask that you focus on more important matters, namely gathering information
from your own clients and presenting their cases substantively. As explained in our letter of 28
July 2016, the information held by your clients is critical but, as yet, you have presented
practically none of this information. Once you have pleaded your clients' claims properly, the
parties will be much better placed to provide proportionate and reasonable disclosure.
Yours faithfully
Bond Dickinson LLP
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FREETHS
Bond Dickinson LLP
DX 38517
Southampton3
By email: andrew.parson:
24 February 2017
Our Ref: JXH/1684/2113618/1
Your Ref: AP6/364065. 1369
Dear Sirs,
BATES & OTHERS -V- POST OFFICE LTD
Claim No: HQ16X01238
SECOND SIGHT
We write further to our recent correspondence, regarding our access to Second Sight, and to the
documents delivered up by them to Post Office.
This firm will not enter into the proposed, or any, contractual arrangement to facilitate access to
Second Sight. We propose to give your client a final opportunity prior to serving our Generic
Particulars of Claim to specify the following:-
1) The categories of information that you will authorise Second Sight to discuss with us; and
2) Which of the documents returned by Second Sight to Post Office, your client will disclose
prior to service of the Generic Particulars of Claim
We note in your letters dated 28 July 2016 and 13 October 2016 that the email data supplied by
Post Office to Second Sight in May 2013 is held on an encrypted hard drive that you have not been
able to decrypt. We are willing to assist in this process and instruct IT experts to attempt to decrypt
this information, which we are confident will be possible. Therefore, please confirm if you will
provide us with access to the hard drive to enable us to carry out this exercise.
The parties have already expended excessive time and money on this issue, and we will each be
mindful of the comments of Senior Master Fontaine regarding mutual cooperation.
In the event that you impede access to documents and information from us, which we are
subsequently provided with during the course of the proceedings, and if we need to amend the
Generic Particulars of Claim as a result, then we will be seeking the associated costs from you.
Freeths LLP sa limited Fabity partnership, registered in England and Wales, parbership number OC304688, Registered Office: Cumberland Cou, 80 Mount Street, Notsngham NG1 BH
‘Authorised and regulated by te Sotclors Regulation Authony. Ata ist ofthe members of Freefns LLP Is avalable for Mspecton athe registered ofice,
www. freeths.co.uk
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24 February 2017
Page 2
For the avoidance of doubt, documents generated by or for the Working Group fall into a different
category to those delivered by Second Sight to Post Office, we require the above in addition to
these documents, which, by their very nature, do not attract privilege status.
Please provide your response by no later than 12pm Wednesday 1 March 2017.
Yours faithfully
LY L
(Woods Le ?
Freeths LLP
Please respond by e-mail where possible
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Kizzie Fenner
From: James Hartley £
Sent: 15 June 2017 1
To: Parsons, Andrew
Ce: James Hartley; Imogen Randall; Lukas, Elisa; Fenner, Kizzie; Prime, Amy; Lisa Bennett
Subject: Post Office - Protocol for Second Sight access
Attachments: Protocol for Second Sight 14 06 17 (Csl suggested amends).docx
Follow Up Flag: Follow up
Flag Status: Flagged
Andy,
Attached are our proposed track changes to your 30 November 2016 revised version of the Protocol. However long
the parties continue dialogue on this, the terms of the Protocol are unlikely to meet all requirements of our
respective clients — there will inevitably need to be compromise on both sides, which we’ve tried to reflect in the
attached.
Please confirm that this can be agreed, whereupon we (Freeths) shall obviously need to communicate with Second
Sight to seek their agreement.
lll await hearing from you as soon as possible on this.
Regards
James
James Hartley
Partner
Dispute Resolution
FREETHS
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from Freeths LLP. do not send any funds to the account and contact us immediately. We will never send you an email telling you that we have changed our
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UTIGATION TEAM OF THE YEAR CORPORATE TEAM OF THE YEAR
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2017
Protocol governing Second Sight’s interaction with Freeths for the
purposes of the Claim
Freeths LLP ©
Post Office Limited @ and
Second Sight Support Services Limited ®
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DATE
PARTIES
(4) Freeths LLP (Company No. OC304688) {in their capacity as solicitors for the Claimants) of 80
Mount Streat, Nottingham, Nottinghamshire, United Kingdom, NG 6HH (Freeths);
(2) Post Office Limited (Company No. 02154540) of Finsbury Dials, 20 Finsbury Street, London,
EC2Y SAQ (Post Office); and
(3) Second Sight Support Services Limited (Company No. 08844000) of 7 Canon Grove, Yarm,
TS15 OXE (Second Sight).
BACKGROUND
(A) Agroup litigation action has been brought by a number of farmer and current postmasters and
others (the Claimants) against Post Office under Claim Number HQ18X01238 (the Claim). As
part of the Claim, the Claimants wish to approach and seek information from Second Sight. The
Claim is the subject of Group Litigation Order dated 22" March 2047 (the GLO).
(B) Post Office engaged Second Sight in June 2012 to Investigate Horizon and the Issues being
raised by a number of Postmasters. Second Sight's work Involved (1) an original inquiry
investigating Horizon from a general perspective, which work concluded in July 2013; and (2)
investigating the circumstances of individual complaints through the “Complaint Review and
Mediation Scheme’, which work concluded In July 2015.
(C) Second Sights engagement was recorded in a letter dated 1 July 2014 (the First Engagement
Letter) which required Second Sight to maintain confidentiality (clause 6) and not to publicly
discuss Its work (clause 8) (the Confidentiality Obligations). The subsequent engagement
letter dated 15 April 2015 (the Second Engagement Letter, together with the First Engagement
Letter, the Engagement Letters) restated the Confidentiality Obligations.
(D) _ In addition, non-disclosure agreements were entered into between Post Office and key personne!
at Second Sight, including the NDAs between lan Henderson dated 31 May 2012 and Ron
Warmington dated 1 June 2012 (the NDAs). Second Sight also undertook and agreed In
October 2012 that certain material was provided to them without waiver of privilege (the
Privilege Undertaking).
(E) Post Office and Second Sight obtained material from Postmasters that Is or may be the subject of
confidentiality obligations owed to those persons and/or covered by data protection law. None of
the parties observing this Protoco} thereby makes any admission or concession as to the scopes
or enforceability of such obligations arising thereunder or under the First Engagement Letter.
(F) The purpose of this protocol [s fo maintain any such confidentiality or privilege in the material heid
by Second Sight, save as expressly otherwise provided in this Protocol. This protocol governs
the agreed basis on which Post Office agrees that Freeths can access Second Sight and sets out
the basis on which Second Sight is released from the Confidentiality Obligations, obligations
under the NDA, and Privilege Undertakings so as to enable them to do so.
AGREED TERMS
4. DEFINITIONS
44 Unless otherwise defined in this protocol, capitalised terms have the same meaning as they have
in the Letter of Response from Bond Dickinson dated 28 July 2016.
4.2 “Document” means anything In which information of any description is recorded including but not
limited to emails and other communications, word processed and electronic documents, and
databases, as well as copies of Documents.
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‘
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3.4
“information” has its natural meaning and includes any knowledge communicated by Second
Sight to Freeths (or anyone).
COMMENCEMENT AND DURATION
This protocol shall commence on the date when It has been signed by alll the parties and shail
continue until the end of the Claim unless terminated in accordance with clause 8.
ACCESS TO SECOND SIGHT AND RELEASE
Subject to the provisions of paragraphs 3.1.1 to 3.1.5, Post Office hereby releases Second Sight
from the Confidentlality Obligations and obligations under the NDAs solely for the purposes of
discussing with Freeths (and Counsel or Expert(s) engaged by Freeths) the work undertaken by
Second Sight to the extent required for the purposes of the Claim.
3.4.4 Freeths shall not request and Second Sight must not provide Freeths with any
Documents. Any requests for Documents must be addressed to Post Office's
solicitors, Bond Dickinson LLP (Bond Dickinson).
3.1.2 The discussions shail only be between Freeths, Counsel or Expert(s) engaged by
Freaths, Alan Bates and lan Henderson and Ron Warmington of Second Sight.
3.4.3 Subject to paragraph 3.1.6, the topics for initial discussion with Second Sight (the
initial Topics) pursuant to this protocol (and as agreed by Bond Dickinson's jetter
dated 21 March 2017) shall be as follows:
» System architecture;
«The Installation and Implementation of Horizon, and Horizon Online, and the
variation between, and capability of, the two;
* Horizon updates, modifications and software versions since installation
¢ Transaction corrections;
e The functionality and capability of Post Office helpline and the technical helpline
operated by Fujitsu;
e Hardware problems;
e The Management Information System or Services and ability of the Horizon
system to report on reconciliation;
e Errors, bugs, fixes, issues and peaks’ including, but not limited to, those thres
known errors In the system listed In Schedule 6 of Bond Dickinson's letter dated
28 July 2016 (Calendar Square / Falkirk, payments mismatch, Suspense
Account Bug);
© The ‘known error jog’ document(s);
e The extant of error repeliency In the Horizon system;
® The reduced reboot clause In Schedule B4.4 of Post Office’s agreement with
Fujitsu; and
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42
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fl
* Post Office's access to transaction information and Its agreement with Fujitsu in
respect of provision of such Information.
:
3.1.4 The parties agree to co-operate In Identifying and agreeing further relevant topics for I
discussions to be permitted under this protocol.
3.4.6 Notwithstanding any other paragraph in this protocol, Freeths and Second Sight shall
not discuss the following categories of Information unless Bond Dickinson's prior
written consent is obtained:
(a) Information concerning any actual or contemplated criminal prosecutions
conducted by either Post Office, Royal Mail, the Procurator Fiscal or Public
Prosecution Service for Northern Ireland and any information relating to the
security Investigations, intemal decisions of Post Office or other staps taken by
Post Office in relation to these prosecutions;
{b) Information concerning any actual or contemplated civil proceedings and any
information relating to the investigations, internal decisions of Post Office or other
steps taken by Post Office In relation fo these proceedings;
{c) Information which relates to postmasters who are not Claimants;
or
(4) any Information which Is (and/or Second Sight believes may be) privileged.
316 In the event that itis unclear to Freeths whether Information would fall within the above
categories, Bond Dickinson's clarification should be sought prior to the Information
being discussed. Post Office will ensure that Bond Dickinson provide reasonable
cooperation In relation to providing such clarification.
For the avoidance of doubt, Second Sight is also released, to the extent necessary and only for
the purposes of this protocol, from their obligations in the First Engagement Letter that they
would not act for former or current subpostmasters against Post Office.
USE OF INFORMATION
The Information provided by Second Sight to Freeths shall be kept confidential and shall not be
used otherwise than for the purpose of the Claim and the Claimants and Freeths shall treat the
Information as if it had been derived from documents disciosed pursuant to standard disclosure
(that is to say, subject to the restrictions In CPR 34.22).
This clause 4 shall also apply to any Documents provided by Second Sight to Freeths In breach i
of this protocol. I
PRIVILEGED MATERIALS i
tf Second Sight or Freeths become aware that Documents or information have been handled in a i
way not in compliance with this protocol, Bond Dickinson should be informed immediately.
if, contrary to and In breach of its obligations hereunder, Second Sight provides or supplies i
Documents and/or privileged Documents or Information to Freeths: H i
i
5.2.4 this shail not amount to a waiver of the privilege which subsists in any Documents or i I
Information in which privilege shall apply; and I I
6.2.2 Post Office reserves its position to prevent privileged Documents or Information being ‘ I
relied upon or adduced as evidence in Court. :
i
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I
:
i
6.4
TA
84
8.2
SECOND SIGHT'S COSTS
Post Office is not responsible for any fees, costs or expenses incurred or charged hy Second
Sight in connection with this protocol,
DATA PROTECTION
In relation to any personal data passed from Second Sight to Freeths, Second Sight and Freeths
shail each be acting as data controllers in their own right.
TERMINATION
In the event that Freaths or Second Sight breach the terms of this protocol by (including but not
limited to):
8.4.4 Freeths requesting or Second Sight providing Documents;
8.1.2 Freeths requesting or Second Sight providing Information which falls within the
categories set out in clause 3.1.53.1.5 above; or
8.1.3 Freeths or the Claimants using the Information other than in accordance with clause 4
above;
then Post Office may terminate this protocol with immediate effect by giving written notice to
Freeths and Second Sight.
In the event that this protocol is terminated:
8.2.1 the permissions and releases provided in clause 3 above will cease to have effect and
any discussions between Second Sight and Freeths will stop;
8.2.2 the obligations under clauses 4 and § will remain in force Insofar as they relate to
information and Documents provided prior to termination; and
8.2.3 clause 6 will remain in force.
RESOLUTION OF ISSUES ARISING UNDER THIS PROTOCOL.
Any Issues, disputes or matters for resolution or determination relating to this protocol shall be
referred to the Managing Judge or the Managing Master nominated to manage the GLO.
GENERAL
This protocol shail not have contractual force other than between Post Office and Second Sight
to the extent necessary for this protocol fo be effective.
Any varlation of this protocol shall be in writing and signed by each party.
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Signed by [name] for and on behaif of Post Office
Limited
Authorised Signatory
bate 21 I@'Ii) ,
Signed by [name] for and on behalf of Second
Sight Services Limited
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:
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FREETHS
Andrew Parsons
Bond Dickinson LLP
DX38517 Southampton 3
13 September 2017
Third letter
Our Ref. JXH/1684/2113618/1
By email only
Dear Sirs
BATES & OTHERS v POST OFFICE LIMITED - GROUP ACTION
CLAIM NO: HQ16X01238
INSPECTION OF KNOWN ERROR LOGS
We write in relation to the Known Error Logs and further to our letter of 6 July 2017, our second letter
of 3 August 2017 and your second letter dated 1 September 2017.
Summary
We first requested sight of the Known Error Logs in our Letter of Claim dated 28 April 2016 and have
repeatedly requested them since, including in our letter of 6 July 2017, in which we identified this as
an urgent matter, stressing that the Known Error Logs were necessary for our clients’ Reply. They
are obviously of central relevance.
The reasons for your client's refusal to provide the Known Error Logs have changed from time to
time. We do not accept any of those reasons as good reasons.
Your client referred to the Known Error Logs at paragraph 50(4) of its Defence, served on 18 July
2017. Our client may therefore inspect that document: CPR 31.14(1)(a). We formally requested
inspection of the Known Error Logs, in our letter of 3 August 2017, on this basis and referred you
expressly to CPR 31.14(1)(a).
You have not responded to that request, despite addressing the Known Error Logs in your letter of
1 September 2017. In any event, the content of your letter would not justify Post Office’s refusal to
Freeths LP isa limited labity parinership, registered in England and Wales, pxtnersip number OC304688, Registered Office: Cumberland Cour, 80 Mount Sree, Notingham NG1 6HH,
‘Authorised and regulated bythe Sellers Regulation Authony. A Ul Ist of the members of Frees LLP is aval fr inspecton atthe registered oie.
www. freeths.co.uk
“175
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se" FREETHS
allow inspection of such plainly important documents. The Claimants obviously need access to the
electronic documents recording errors in Horizon, which we understand to be the Known Error Logs.
We now require Post Office to provide inspection of the Known Error Logs, failing which we will issue
an application for an order that you do so, without further reference to you.
Please confirm by 5pm on Friday, 15 September 2017, that Post Office will provide inspection of the
Known Error Logs by 5pm on Friday, 22 September 2017.
A. Recent Correspondence
For convenience, we briefly summarise the most recent correspondence to which we have referred
above.
1. 6July 2017 — On 6 July 2017, in anticipation of service of the Generic Defence and the CMC
listed on 19 October 2017, we wrote to you proposing sensible directions for the CMC and
highlighting the “urgent matter of disclosure of the Known Error Log(s)”. We stated that the
case obviously involved whether there were errors associated with Horizon that impacted
upon branches, as well as what Post Office knew of them; the refusal to provide the Known
Error Log to the Claimants prevented them from setting out any detailed particulars of bugs,
errors or defects in the Generic Particulars of Claim. We emphasised that we needed to be
in a position to give these issues careful consideration well in advance of the CMC, and in
any event when considering our clients’ Reply. We invited provision of the Known Error
Logs with your client’s Generic Defence on 18 July 2017.
2. 18 July 2017 — On 18 July 2017, we were served with Post Office’s Generic Defence. The
Known Error Logs were not provided. Paragraph 50(4) of the Generic Defence expressly
referred to the Known Error Log in the following terms:
“It is admitted that Fujitsu maintain a “Known Error Log’. This is not used by Post Office
and nor is it in Post Office’s control. To the best of Post Office’s information and belief,
the Known Error Log is a knowledge base document used by Fujitsu which explains how
to deal with, or work around, minor issues that can sometimes arise in Horizon for which
(often because of their triviality) system-wide fixes that have not been developed and
implemented. It is not a record of software coding errors or bugs for which system-wide
fixes have been developed and implemented. To the best of Post Office's knowledge
and belief, there is no issue in the Known Error Log that could affect the accuracy of a
branch’s accounts or the secure transmission and storage of data.” [emphasis added]
Froeths LLP slimes abitypartersip, regstered in England and Wales, partnership ruber OC304688. Registered Office: Cumberland Court, 80 Mount Street, Nottingham NG EHH
‘ulhrsed and regutaed by the Sallctors Regulation Ahoy. Al ist of he members of Freetis LLP is avaiable for inspection atthe registered oie,
www. freeths.co.uk
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3. 3 August 2017 — As noted in the Summary above, we wrote to you and specifically requested
inspection of the Known Error Log pursuant to CPR 31.14(1)(a) on the basis that the Known
Error Logs were mentioned in Post Office's Defence. We also made the point that the
Schedule 1 to your letter of 13 October 2016 stated that a review of the Known Error Log
had been undertaken (by Fujitsu, apparently at Post Office’s behest) —directly contradicting
the pleading in the Generic Defence, as to control.
4. 1 September 2017 - Your final correspondence on this issue failed to acknowledge or
engage with the request in our letter of 3 August 2017 and changed tack yet again, now
asserting:
“Access to the Known Error Log (KEL) can also be considered as part of these wider
disclosure issues. The KEL is not a document, but a live and proprietary database with
approximately 4,000 entries. Since the KEL is a constantly rolling document, the current
version in use has evolved over time and may not reflect the version in place at time (sic)
which is relevant to the Claimants’ claims. Providing “disclosure” of it is therefore not
easy to do and prone to being a disproportionately expensive exercise if not handled
carefully. Addressing whether and, if so, how your client should have access to the KEL
therefore needs to be considered in the context of any wider directions that are made.”
[emphasis added]
B. Post Office’s Objections
We address below the objections which we now understand Post Office to rely upon.
Not a Document
Your contention that “The KEL is not a document” is unsustainable and obviously wrong for two
reasons:
1. First, CPR 31.4 expressly provides that “In this Part —- ‘document’ means anything in which
information of any description is recorded.”
2. You have repeatedly referred to the Known Error Logs as being a document in
correspondence (e.g. in the letter of 1 September above) and have pleaded that ‘the Known
Error Log is a knowledge base document”: Defence, paragraph 50(4), above.
Froeths LLP slimes abitypartersip, regstered in England and Wales, partnership ruber OC304688. Registered Office: Cumberland Court, 80 Mount Street, Nottingham NG EHH
‘ulhrsed and regutaed by the Sallctors Regulation Ahoy. Al ist of he members of Freetis LLP is avaiable for inspection atthe registered oie,
www. freeths.co.uk
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Not in Post Office’s Control
As we set out in our letter of 3 August 2017, it is clear from Schedule 1 to your letter of 13 October
2016 that the Known Error Logs are in Post Office’s control. You have not responded to that. Indeed,
your letter of 1 September 2017, that you are no longer advancing this argument.
CPR 31.8(2) provides that: “a party has or has had a document in his control if —
(a) it is or was in his physical possession;
(b) he has or has had a right to possession of it; or
(c) he has or has had a right to inspect or take copies of it.”
We have sought express confirmation from you, by Requests 30 to 33 in our Request for Further
Information, that Post Office has, at the very least, a contractual entitlement to data derived from the
known error log. We regard it as inconceivable that Post Office does not have any contractual rights
to obtain or inspect the Known Error Logs or data derived therefrom.
Difficult and disproportionate disclosure
Paragraph 1.5 of your 1 September 2017 letter states contends that there is a great difficulty in
disclosing the Known Error Log in a relevant form given that the current version “has evolved over
time” and “has approximately 4,000 entries”. You have been expressly on notice of your duty to
preserve documents since our letter of 16 December 2015 and, given the sensitivity and seriousness
of the issues raised in the Mediation Scheme, we would have expected you to have preserved all
relevant documents from that time in any event.
More specifically, the Known Error Log was a document which we specifically requested in our Letter
of Claim and have consistently pursued thereafter. We also consider it significant that in your letter
to us on 6 May 2016, you stressed the need ‘to ensure that all metadata in any electronic documents
are preserved” and asked us to confirm that we had “advised four] clients on a method of making
mirror copies of documents that preserves the metadata”.
At present we do not believe that there should be any difficulty in providing inspection, as required
by the CPR, such as would justify the objection which Post Office advances. It is inconceivable that
there is no sensible and proportionate way in which inspection can be given in usable form.
C. Conclusion
Our client is entitled to inspection of the Known Error Log.
Froeths LLP slimes abitypartersip, regstered in England and Wales, partnership ruber OC304688. Registered Office: Cumberland Court, 80 Mount Street, Nottingham NG EHH
‘ulhrsed and regutaed by the Sallctors Regulation Ahoy. Al ist of he members of Freetis LLP is avaiable for inspection atthe registered oie,
www. freeths.co.uk
C11/6/216
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Please confirm by 5pm on Friday, 15 September 2017, that Post Office will provide inspection of
the Known Error Logs by 5pm on Friday, 22 September 2017, failing which we will issue an
application under CPR 31.14 for inspection.
Yours faithfully
a) L
hheohsk?
Freeths LLP
Please respond by e-mail where possible
Froeths LLP slimes abitypartersip, regstered in England and Wales, partnership ruber OC304688. Registered Office: Cumberland Court, 80 Mount Street, Nottingham NG EHH
‘ulhrsed and regutaed by the Sallctors Regulation Ahoy. Al ist of he members of Freetis LLP is avaiable for inspection atthe registered oie,
www. freeths.co.uk
C11/6/217
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www. bonddickinsen.com
22 September 2017 Bond Dickinson LLP.
Oceana House
38-49 Commercial Road
Southameton
For the Attention of Mr J Hartley
Freeths LLP Fax!
Floor 3 Dx: 36517 Southampton 3
100 Wellington Street
ni
Leeds
LS1 4LT
Our ref:
APBIAPGI364065.1369
By email only Your tef:
WFR/1803/212876/ 1/ER
Email: james.hartley;
Dear Sirs
The Post Office Group Litigation
Known Error Log ("KEL")
We refer to your third letter of 13 September 2017.
We note that in your letter you have sought to portray Post Office as refusing to provide access to the
KEL. The possibility of accessing the KEL was not refused by Post Office. Our client's position was that
the KEL was not relevant to these proceedings for the reasons siated in its Generic Defence, but that it
would try to facilitate access to the KEL at an appropriate time. We had stated that in our view the
appropriate time was at the same time as similar disclosure was given.
Whilst we disagree with a number of the points in your letter (including your right to inspect the KEL.
under CPR 31.14), given your anxiety to inspect it Post Office has discussed with Fujitsu the methods by
which access can be provided.
The KEL is a database which cannot easily be downloaded and provided to you. Fujitsu has therefore
kindly agreed that the Claimants’ IT expert may inspect the KEL at its premises in Bracknell. This will
enable your expert to understand the nature of the KEL and to satisfy himself as to the relevance of any
of the entries in it.
Please could you confirm the name and details of your expert and his dates of availability over the next
two weeks. As the KEL contains some information that is confidential and commercially sensitive, Fujitsu
has asked that your expert signs a routine non-disclosure agreement. We have asked Fujitsu to provide
a draft for your approval.
Yours faithfully
ByelDwensor lp
Bond Dickinson LLP
Bond Dickinson LLP is a limited liability partnership registered in England and Wales under number 0C317661. VAT registration number is
GB123393627. Registered office: 4 More London Riverside, London, SE1 2AU, where a list of members’ names Is open to inspection. We use the
term partner to refer to a member of the LLP, or an employee or consultant who is of equivatent standing. Bond Dickinson LLP is authorised and.
regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority.
4A_36920737_1 180
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www. bonddickinson.com
29 September 2017 Bond Dickinson LLP
‘Oceana House
49-49 Commercial Road
Southampton
S015 1GA
For the Attention of Mr J Hartiey
Freeths LLP
Floor 3
100 Wellington Street
Leeds
LS1 4LT
Our ref
. APS/APG/364065.1369
By email only Your ref:
1FR/1803/212878/1/ER
Email: james.hartley!_
Dear Sirs
The Post Office Group Litigation
Known Error Log ("KEL")
We refer to your fourth letter of 27 September 2017 and the conversation between James Hartley (of
Freeths) and Andrew Parsons (of Bond Dickinson) of the same date in which it was confirmed that the
Claimants’ expert was Jason Coyne of IT Group.
Fujitsu has agreed that the Claimants' IT expert may inspect the KEL at its premises in Bracknell. Post
Office's therefore proposes that Mr Coyne meets with Fujitsu to review the KEL. This will enable Mr
Coyne to understand the nature of the KEL and the relevance of any of the entries in it. We do not
believe that an initial call between Mr Coyne and Fujitsu is necessary since a review of the KEL may
answer any queries. Any further access to the KEL which is required can be discussed between the
parties following this initial inspection.
The above proposal is without prejudice to the parties’ respective positions on the disclosure of the KEL.
as set out in the previous correspondence.
Yours faithfully
“
Bond Dickinson LLP
Bond Dickinson LLP is a limited liability partnership registered in England and Wales under number 0C317661. VAT registration number is
GB123393627. Registered office: , where a list of members’ names is open to inspection. We use the term partner to refer to a member of the LLP, or
an employee or consultant who is of equivalent standing. Bond Dickinson LLP is authorised and regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority
4A 37020114 4 181
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www.bonddickinson.com
6 October 2017 Bond Dickinson LLP
(Oveana House
39-49 Commercial Road
Southampton
S015 1GA
For the Attention of Mr J Hartley
Freeths LLP
Floor 3
100 Wellington Street
Leeds
LS1 4LT
Ou:
APSIAP6/364065.1369
By email only Tete:
IFRI1803/212876/1/ER
Email: james.hartley_
Dear Sirs
The Post Office Group Litigation
Known Error Log ("KEL")
Further to our letter dated 4 October 2017, we are able to confirm the arrangements for the meeting
between Fujitsu and the Claimants’ expert, Mr Coyne.
The meeting will be attended on behalf of Fujitsu by Pete Newsome (Post Office's account manager at
Fujitsu) and a member of the support services team. Fujitsu's preferred date/time for the meeting is
Monday, 9 October 2017 at 10am. Please confirm that your expert will attend this meeting.
As explained in our letter of 28 September 2017, the purpose of the meeting and the attendance of
Fujitsu at this is to enable Mr Coyne to understand the nature of the KEL and the relevance of the entries
it contains. If following his review Mr Coyne has any queries on the substance of these entries or
otherwise these should be placed in writing and addressed to Bond Dickinson.
In our letter dated 20 September 2017, we informed you that Fujitsu had asked for a non-disclosure
agreement to be signed to protect its confidential and commercially sensitive information. We have now
received drafts from Fujitsu. Accordingly, we enclose an individual confidentiality undertaking for Mr
Coyne to sign, together with a corporate non-disclosure agreement for IT Group Ltd. Since we/Fujitsu
are not aware of the capacity in which Mr Coyne is connected with IT Group Ltd (ie whether he is an
employee or contractor), you will see that this information needs to be completed within the relevant
documents. Routine information such as IT Group Ltd and Mr Coyne's address details also needs to be
inserted.
We should be grateful if you would attend to these details and then return the signed agreements to us
prior to the meeting between Fujitsu and Mr Coyne.
We look forward to hearing from you.
Yours faithfully
Bond Dickinson LLP
Bond Dickinson LLP is a limited liability partnership registered in England and Wales under number 0C317661. VAT registration number is
GB123393627. Registered office: , where a list of members’ names is open to inspection. We use the term partner to refer to a member of the LLP, or
an employee or consultant who is of equivalent standing. Bond Dickinson LLP is authorised and regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority.
182
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Enclosures
1 Confidentiality undertaking
2. Non-disclosure agreement
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www.bonddickinson.com
10 April 2017 Bond Dickinson LLP
Oceana House
Sixth Letter 30-49 Commercial Road
‘Southampton
S015 1GA
For the Attention of Mr J Hartley
Freeths LLP
Floor 3
100 Wellington Street
Leeds
West Yorkshire Ouriel
LS1 4LT GRWMI/APE:354065.1969
Your ref:
By special delivery and email SLHIT668/2139618//0R
Dear Sirs
Bates & Others -v- Post Office Limited
Claim Number: HQ16X01238
Disclosure of Contractual Documents
We refer to our letter dated 34 March 2017,
Post Office has conducted a search of the likely locations where core contractual documents (the
Contractual Documents) may be held, despite being under no obligation to do so at this time.
We now disclose the relevant Contractual Documents that Post Office has located to date.
Disclosure of Contractual Documents
We enclose with this letter an encrypted USB device, which stores disclosed Contractual Documents.
The password for the USB device will be sent to Mr Hartiey in a separate email.
Please also find enclosed an Index to the Contractual Documents contained on the USB device. For
ease of reference, the enclosed Index lists the Claimants in alphabetical order and details the name and
date of their Contractual Documents respectively. The document numbers listed in the Index match the
document numbers on the USB device.
Standard Conditions
For 26 of the Claimants, the Contractual Documents being disclosed include a Preface, which
incorporates documents by reference. One of these documents is a set of Standard Conditions.
The enclosed USB device includes the relevant version of the Standard Conditions applicable to each of
these 26 Prefaces. On the basis that the same set of Standard Conditions applies to more than one of
the Claimants, we have not included duplicate copies of the Standard Conditions. Instead, the entry in
the index for each of these 26 Claimants is marked with the version of the Standard Conditions that
applies. The corresponding Standard Conditions can then be found at the end of the index.
Disclosure from the Claimants
The exercise of locating these documents has been extensive and time consuming. It is thought that at
least 100 man-hours have been incurred by Post Office staff, in addition to our time. Post Office has
Bond Dickinson LLP a limited liability partnership registered in England and Wales under number 0C317561. VAT registration number is
6B123393627. Registered office: 4 More London Riverside, London, SE 2AU, where a list of members’ names is open to inspection. We use the
term partner to refer to a member of the LLP. or an employee or consultant who is of equivalent standing. Bond Dickinson LLP is authorised and
regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority
AA_35294681_3
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applied extensive resource to provide these documents. Post Office will continue to do so and will
provide any further Contractual Documents as and when appropriate.
In reciprocity, we should be grateful if you would now undertake a similar exercise in locating the
contractual documents held by each Claimant. Your clients’ records may help fill some of the gaps in
Post Office's records. It may also help determine whether or not your clients had sight of contractual
documents before or during their tenure as postmaster.
Yours faithfully
Kond Dickuison LLP -
Bond Dickinson LLP
Enclosures
1 Encrypted USB Device
2. Index of Contractual Documents
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