Commercial Court User email Guidance
The guidance is divided into two sections:
- Section 1 contains those provisions of general application that may in due course be developed as a possible guide applicable to all courts that will permit the use of email
- Section 2 contains the specific provisions applicable to the Commercial and Admiralty Court.
Section 1: General Provisions
Basic requirements
- A party must not use email to take any step in a claim which requires a fee to be paid for that step.
- If a party sends by email a document for which a fee is payable upon filing, the document will be treated as not having been filed.
- Where a party sends or lodges a document by email he must still comply with any rule or practice direction requiring the document to be served on any other person.
- Nothing in this guidance requires any person to accept service of a document by email.
Form and content of emails sent to the court
The subject line of the email must contain only the matters specified in Section 2.
The court will normally send any reply by email to documents or correspondence sent by email.
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All replies will be sent to the email address from which the email has been sent. If the sender wishes the reply to be copied to other parties or to another email address used by the sender of the message, such email addresses must be specified in the copy line.
The Court will not send copies to clients or others not on the record; the copy line must therefore not contain the addresses of such persons.
The email must also contain in the body of the email the name and telephone number of the sender.
Correspondence and documents may be sent either as text or attachments, except that documents required to be in a practice form must be sent in that form as attachments using one of the formats specified in Section 2.
Parties may not use email to send any document which exceeds forty pages in the aggregate of normal typescript in length or 2Mb whichever is the smaller. Documents may not be subdivided to comply with this requirement.
Where a party files a document by email, he must not send a hard copy in addition, unless there are good reasons for so doing or the Court requires.
Parties are advised to bear in mind when sending correspondence or documents of a confidential or sensitive nature that the security of emails cannot be guaranteed.
Where a time limit applies, it remains the responsibility of the party to ensure that the document is filed in time. Parties are advised to allow for delays or downtime on their server or the servers used by the Court.
Receipt and acknowledgement of email by the Court
A document is not filed until the email is received by the court at the addressee’s computer terminal, whatever time it is shown to have been sent.
The time of receipt of an email at the addressee’s computer terminal will be recorded.
If an email is received after 4pm it will be treated as having been received on the next day the court office is open.
The court will send an automatic acknowledgment when an email is received. The acknowledgment is merely to confirm receipt and does not indicate that a document has been accepted as complying with the procedures set out in any rule or practice directions. If no acknowledgment of an email is received within a reasonable period, the sender should assume that the court has not received it and should send the email again, or file the document by another means.
Parties must not telephone to enquire as to the receipt of an email. They must observe the procedure set out in the paragraph above.
Section 2: Provisions applicable to the Commercial and Admiralty Court
Initial period of application
This section of the guidance provides for the operation of a scheme to apply for a six month period from 17 March 2003 to 15 September 2003 permitting parties using the Commercial and Admiralty Court to:-
communicate with the court by email in the circumstances specified
lodge skeleton arguments by email.
This pilot has now been extended indefinitely
The subject line
The subject line of the email must contain only the following information which must be in the following order:-
First, the proper title of the claim (abbreviated as necessary) with the claimant named first and the defendant named second; unless the action is an Admiralty action, the name of the ship should not be used
Second, the claim number.
Attachments
Attachments must be in one of the following formats:-
Microsoft Word viewer/reader (.doc) in Word 1997 or later format
Rich Text Format as (.rtf) files
Plain/Formatted Text as (.txt) files
Hypertext documents as (.htm) files
Adobe Acrobat as (.pdf) files minimum viewer version 4
Documents for which email may be used
email may be used:-
to communicate with the Registry in relation to queries on Orders made, requests to transfer a case into or out of the Commercial Court and general correspondence, including questions on practice
to communicate with the Listing Office in matters relating to listing, fixing of hearings, the lodging of pre-trial checklists, progress monitoring information sheets and the lodging of skeleton arguments
to communicate with the Admiralty Marshal (except for out of hours business).
Sending emails to the Court
For Listing matters, the email addresses are:-
For all matters relating to listing and for all skeleton arguments: ComCt.Listing@hmcourts-service.gsi.gov.uk
For all correspondence for the Registry the address is: ComCt.Registry@hmcourts-service.gsi.gov.uk
For all matters for the Admiralty Marshal or the business of the Admiralty Marshal, the address is: Admiralty.bus@hmcourts-service.gsi.gov.uk
Communication with the Clerk to a Commercial Judge
No documents or correspondence should be sent by email to the Clerk to a Commercial Judge dealing with a case unless:
- an arrangement is made with the Clerk in each specific instance in which email is to be used
if such an arrangement is made, the email must be copied to the appropriate Listing Office Address, The Registry Address, or the Admiralty Marshal Address, as the case may be.