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8 August 2018 Womble Bond Dickinson (UK) LLP
Oceana House
3949 Commercial Road
Southampton
Mr J Hartley Somer
Freeths LLP
Floor 3, 100 Wellington Street
Leeds
LS1 SLT
Second Letter
Our ref
i ‘AP6IDJP2/364065,1369
By email only Your ref:
JXH/1684/2113618/1/MA
Email: james.hartle:
Dear Sirs
Post Office Group Litigation ALA
Expert's Request for Further Information (RFl) and 20 July email
We write further to our letter dated 1 August and our second letter dated 6 August.
RFI
We enclose an updated response to the RFI. Where Post Office objects to a request the reasons are set
out in the response. There are three re-occurring grounds of objection that we explain in more detail
below.
14. Anumber of Mr Coyne's requests crossover with already agreed classes of disclosure. It
appears that Mr Coyne has not taken into account the fact that Stage 3 Disclosure was ordered
at the CMC on 5 June. Stage 3 Disclosure was under Model C (being narrow classes of
document) and related exclusively to the Horizon Issues. The scope of that disclosure was
carefully negotiated between the parties and the remaining points of dispute decided by the
Managing Judge.
It is not permissible for Mr Coyne to make requests for information that cut across the Order
made on 5 June. His requests do this in a number of ways:
a) Some of the requests are outright requests for documents. These are already covered
by the scope of Stage 3 Disclosure or, if they go further, then wider requests for
disclosure should have been sought at the 5 June CMC.
b) Some requests are tantamount to requests for disclosure, such as asking for details of
reports to Post Office. The same points in (a) apply.
c) Some requests would effectively require a substantive disclosure exercise to be
undertaken to provide the requested information and are in essence disclosure by
another route as once our client had collated these documents it would be obliged to
disclose them.
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The effect of these requests is to extend the scope of disclosure in ways that were not sought by
the Claimants at the 5 June CMC. This is not a proper use of the procedure in CPR 35.9 as it is
not designed to be a route around the normal rules on disclosure.
2. Many of the requests seek information on how often a particular situation has occurred and over
what period. Post Office has made reasonable and proportionate enquiries to determine
whether or not such information has already been collated or could be easily collated as part of
ordinary working practices at Post Office and Fujitsu. Where that information is reasonably and
proportionately available Post Office has provided it.
However, some of the requests ask for information about how often something has happened
over an 18+ year period across the entire Post Office network. Where that information has not
already been collated as part of ordinary practices, it would require a retrospective review of Post
Office's and / or Fujitsu's activities over extended periods of time. This may well entail needing
to search through large volumes of documents and data to collate the necessary information to
answer the request. Such exercises are not reasonable nor proportionate and are objected to by
Post Office.
3. Some of Mr Coyne's requests are outside of the scope of the Horizon Issues. While he has
sought to circumvent this by arguing that any matter which ultimately has an impact on branch
accounts is within scope, the Horizon Issues were the subject of much negotiation between the
parties and items such as Post Office's back-office reconciliation procedures were not included in
the agreed Horizon Issues (despite being originally requested by the Claimants and ultimately
conceded). It is not appropriate for Mr Coyne to seek to expand the scope of the Horizon Issues
through requests for information. If the Claimants / Mr Coyne believes that the scope of the
Horizon Issues needs revising, this proposal should be expressly made and supported with
reasons.
20 July email
We also enclose a table containing Post Office's response to Mr Coyne's 20 July email pursuant to
paragraph 1 of the Fifth CMC Order.
Although you have not responded to our 1 August letter, in which we asked Mr Coyne to clarify requests
), vi) and vill) (because their meaning and purpose are not clear), our client has dealt with those
requests as best as it can
You will see in our client's responses that it is working with Fujitsu to establish whether a mechanism
could be created to export or provide Mr Coyne with direct access to the 220,000 Peak entries or at least
some / part of them. We believe that this may assist Mr Coyne but there are serious technical barriers to
doing this which are currently not possible to overcome. We will revert when we are able to do so, but in
the meantime we remind you that there is an open offer for the experts to inspect the Peak system at
Fujitsu's offices for a second day.
Yours faithfully
Ufanble Bird hers CUED LL
Womble Bond Dickinson (UK) LLP
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