(2) But it may be obvious that some parts, such as the details of third party transactions, can be omitted or blanked out. The starting point must always be that the entire document should be made available to the Court. Without attempting to re-write that guidance, it can in our view be summarised as follows: (1) Where the Court is called upon to resolve a question of construction of a contractual document, the document must in all normal circumstances be placed before the Court as a whole. For our part we consider that Hancock provides sufficiently clear guidance for future cases. We do not therefore have to consider which parts of the judgment are strictly part of the ratio of the decision by which we are bound, and which are to be regarded as obiter, as we received no argument inviting us to depart from anything Henderson LJ there said. As can be seen all parties took Hancock as their starting point. GUIDANCE ON REDACTION GENERALLY The Court of Appeal considered the guidance given Henderson LJ in Hancock v Promontoria (Chestnut) Limited EWCA Civ 907 ( “Hancock”). The defendants appealed on the grounds that the court should not have allowed the claimant to rely on redacted documents to prove title. In each case parts of the assignment the claimant relied on to prove the title to sue were redacted, those parts regarded as being “commercially sensitive”. The claimant brought actions as the assignee of various debts.
The general position under the CPR is that cases should be managed in such a way that by the time the parties get to trial they should know what the evidence is on which they will each be relying, and procedural matters should have all been resolved.
” … it is in general unsatisfactory for questions as to the extent of redactions to be first raised at trial. In particular issues relating to redaction should not be an issue sprung on the court for the first time at trial. In Promontoria (Oak) Ltd v Emanuel & Ors EWCA Civ 1682 the Court of Appeal set out some guidance in relation to the approach of the courts when documents are redacted.