By Sonia Tolaney, Sandy Phipps

CPR 31.22 provides that disclosed documents may be used only for the purpose of the proceedings in which they were disclosed without the consent of the disclosing party or the Court’s permission. It is well established that this rule, known as the collateral use prohibition, applies both to the disclosed documents themselves and to information derived from the documents.

In The ECU Group PLC v HSBC Bank PLC [2018] EWHC 3045, a decision handed down on 9 November 2018, Andrew Baker J considered whether to grant retrospective permission for a party to use disclosed documents in breach of CPR 31.22.