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In Baroness Lawrence & Ors v Associated Newspapers the High Court has issued a useful reminder of the strict requirements which must be satisfied before the Court will make a third-party disclosure order and the "exceptional" nature of this discretionary power

In Baroness Lawrence & Ors v Associated Newspapers the High Court has issued a useful reminder of the strict requirements which must be satisfied before the Court will make a third-party disclosure order and the "exceptional" nature of this discretionary power

Overview

In the long-running privacy lawsuit against Associated Newspapers brought by a group of high-profile claimants including Prince Harry and Elton John, the High Court has reminded practitioners that an applicant seeking disclosure against a third party (a "stranger" to the litigation) must demonstrate that the threshold requirements have been met. Even if the relevant criteria are satisfied, the Court retains a discretion as to whether to make the third-party disclosure order. The applicant must therefore consider how the requested order fits within the wider context of the proceedings. The Court's judgment is available here

Facts

A group of claimants including Baroness Lawrence, Prince Harry, Elton John, Liz Hurley and Sadie Frost (the "Claimants") have brought claims against Associated Newspapers in which they allege that journalists working for Associated Newspapers used unlawful methods to obtain information about them. The trial of the claims commenced on 19 January 2026 and is due to take place over nine weeks.

During the course of the trial, the Claimants made an application under CPR 31.17 for an order requiring the Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis (the "MPS") to disclose documents generated during a police operation in 2007. The Claimants sought disclosure of the documents in order to support an alleged inconsistency in the evidence of a journalist who worked for Associated Press as the relevant documents were said to record what the journalist had told police about the source used for an article published in the Daily Mail in November 2007.

While Associated Press objected to the application, MPS did not.  

Third-party disclosure orders: CPR 31.17

Third-party disclosure applications are governed by CPR 31.17, with CPR 31.17(3) setting out the criteria which the Court must consider in determining whether to exercise its discretion to order disclosure against a third party:

(3) The court may make an order under this rule only where–

(a) the documents of which disclosure is sought are likely to support the case of the applicant or adversely affect the case of one of the other parties to the proceedings (the "Relevance Threshold"); and

(b) disclosure is necessary in order to dispose fairly of the claim or to save costs (the "Necessity Threshold").

(emphasis and defined terms added)

The judge's findings

The judge refused the application on the basis that the information sought failed to satisfy both the Relevance Threshold and the Necessity Threshold.

As regards the Relevance Threshold, the Court held that the information sought related to "a matter going solely to credit" and did not advance the Claimants' case as to how the information in the 2007 Daily Mail article had been obtained, nor did it "materially undermine the Defendant's case on that issue".  On the Necessity Threshold, the judge found that the issue could be fairly determined without the third-party disclosure being sought as the alleged inconsistencies in the journalist's account could be tested via cross-examination by reference to other evidence.

The judge also considered wider factors including the timing of the application which was "made at a very late stage" without good reason, noting that the Claimants had been aware of the alleged inconsistency, at the very latest, by the time witness statements were exchanged. The granting of the application would also risk a level of disruption to the trial which the judge said would "be wholly disproportionate to the limited and peripheral utility of the disclosure sought".

In refusing the application, the judge noted the following points which are of general application in the context of third-party disclosure orders:

  • The jurisdiction under CPR 31.17 is "exceptional" and "disclosure against non-parties is the exception rather than the rule".

  • The fact that the third-party does not object to the application for disclosure is not determinative.

  • The Court must be satisfied that the conditions under CPR 31.17 are met and that it is "appropriate" for the court to exercise its discretion. 

The judge said at [11]: "The fact that the documents may be deployed to challenge [the journalist's] consistency or reliability does not render them "likely" to support the Claimants' case within the meaning of the rule. CPR 31.17 is not a mechanism for obtaining third-party disclosure simply to conduct collateral attacks on credibility."

Conclusions

The judgment is a useful reminder that any application for third-party disclosure must be considered carefully. The fact that a party may be able to establish that the requested documents are both relevant to a party's case and necessary for the fair disposal of the claim is not enough – the applicant must also be able to persuade the Court that ordering disclosure against a third-party is an appropriate exercise of this "exceptional" discretionary power. Practitioners must therefore be mindful of the factors that will likely inform the exercise of the discretion – one of the key ones being how promptly the application has been brought. Consideration should also be given to the likely probative value of the documents being sought compared to the impact of the order on the third-party and the wider proceedings.

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