Edgeworth Capital (Luxembourg) S.À R.L. v Derek Quinlan
In the High Court of Justice, Business and Property Courts of England and Wales, Insolvency and Companies List
Case BR-2019-000166
Before Justice Miles
Decided on October 14, 2021

Relevancy of the Case: Time limits for disclosure of electronic records in case of insolvency proceedings

Relevant Facts of the Case

• In this case, Edgeworth Capital is the petitioner, while Derek Quinlan is the debtor. The court clubbed the present case with another case where Derek is the claimant, while Edgeworth Capital is the defendant.
• The court had made a disclosure order against the claimant. This order required him to disclose electronic documents stored in his laptop by July 30, 2021. From July to September, he made multiple applications for extension.
• In the third application, he sought an extension until September 30, 2021. He submitted that a cyber attack on his counsel’s firm led to a downtime of one week.

Prominent Arguments by the Counsels

• The defendant’s counsel argued that the delay in producing electronic records is significant. In such cases, a party should carry out all the steps expeditiously so that a proper review of documents is possible. If necessary, further applications for disclosure can be made. He submitted that the claimant failed to comply with Paragraph 5 of the Disclosure Order as he did not mention the steps taken by him to comply with other paragraphs of the Order.
• The claimant’s counsel submitted that he complied with the requirements. The trial is fixed for July 2022. If there was any breach, it did not have any significant impact on the pre-trial steps.

Opinion of the Bench

• Considering the stage of the proceedings, it is unreasonable to regard the breach as insignificant. However, it is of relatively low significance in the context of the proceedings.
• The claimant has complied with Paragraph 5 requirements as he explained that he found one further laptop. His explanation also included the steps he took concerning accessing and harvesting documents.

Final Decision

• The court ordered an extension until September 30, 2021.

Satvik Mishra, an undergraduate student at the Rajiv Gandhi National University of Law, Punjab, prepared this case summary during his internship with The Cyber Blog India in May/June 2022.