If you are involved in court proceedings, as a general rule you must disclose any documents relevant to the matters in dispute, even if they may harm your case. If the other side asks for documents, the questions you need to consider are:
- whether the information requested is relevant to the issues in the case, and
- whether the request is proportionate to the claim.
It would be unreasonable, for example, to require 10 years' worth of documents for a small value claim: the cost of retrieving them would not be justifiable.
You do not have to let the other party see any documents prepared for the purposes of the litigation, or for the purpose of giving or receiving legal advice. These are 'privileged'. However, you may not be able to prevent the other side from seeing documents that you consider to be 'commercially sensitive', if they are relevant.
As well as requesting documents, the other side is entitled to ask for further information based on what you said in initiating (or responding to) the claim. This will usually be to clarify a point. If you fail to respond to this request, the other party may make an application to court, under the Civil Procedure Rules, for an order requiring you to respond, and you could be billed for the costs they incur in making this application.
