Non-party entitled to access to documents filed at court
Master McCloud has held that documents "filed" on the court record which are read in court can be accessed by non-parties provided the non-party has a legitimate interest. Documents on the record of the court which are not read in court are subject to a more stringent test, namely, there must be strong grounds for thinking that access is necessary in the interests of justice.
The principle of open justice is engaged even if a case settles before judgment. In this case, filed paper bundles were records of the court. However, a bundle provided solely in electronic form via a document management system (and which contained disclosed documents) was not a bundle filed at court, and so did not fall within the scope of CPR r5.4C "because 'filing' required delivery to the court office and in any event CPR 5.5 provided that a 'practice direction may make provision for documents to be filed or sent to the court' by electronic means and there was no provision for electronic filing of bundles".
It was irrelevant that the parties had agreed a confidential settlement. This point should be borne in mind when documents are filed at court. If documents other than statements of case have been filed at court (and filing does not include providing documents in electronic form, where no order for electronic filing has been made), they may be vulnerable to an order allowing access to non-parties even though they are later made the subject of confidentiality obligations as between the parties themselves (and even though they may not have been read in court).
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