Key Facts
- •The FDIC, as receiver for 19 closed US banks, claims collusive suppression of the USD LIBOR rate by various defendant banks (BDs) and facilitation by the BBA.
- •The claim alleges breaches of competition law and US tort law.
- •The claimant seeks disclosure of various categories of data, including transaction data and voice recordings.
- •The case is complex, with proceedings ongoing in both the US and the UK.
- •Previous case management conferences (CMCs) have established a timetable for the proceedings.
Legal Principles
Disclosure is governed by CPR 31 and PD 31C (for competition cases), with proportionality as the touchstone.
CPR 31 and PD 31C
In large and complex disclosure exercises, a focused, "top-down" approach is needed, prioritizing the most relevant documents.
The RBS Rights Issue Litigation [2015] EWHC 3433 (Ch)
The court has the power to require a party to give information necessary for the fair and efficient determination of the dispute.
Inherent court powers
Practice Direction 31D para 31(1) requires disclosure data for electronic documents, including audio files. This includes author/sender and recipient information.
PD 31D para 31(1)
Outcomes
The claimant's applications for Key Categories, Transaction Data, and Date Range disclosure were largely dismissed as premature.
The court found the claimant already possessed sufficient information to formulate specific disclosure requests. The court deemed it premature to require the defendants to audit their own disclosure and propose further searches before the claimant's review of recently provided documents was complete. The court also found some of the requests overly broad and potentially disproportionately burdensome.
The voice data application was not granted in its entirety, but the court provided guidance.
The court recognized the importance of identifying speakers in audio files but found the claimant's request overly broad. The court encouraged cooperation to identify speakers in a subset of the recordings.