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THE ADMIRALTY & COMMERCIAL COURTS GUIDE 2006
Appendix 17
   
Commercial Court User E-mail Guidance
   
Introduction
   
1.   This guidance sets out how parties may communicate by e-mail with the Commercial and Admiralty Courts on certain matters with effect from 17 March 2003.
Initial period of application
2.   This guidance will apply for an initial period of 6 months. Towards the end of that period, the guidance will be reviewed in the light of the experience gained. It may then be revised as necessary.
Documents for which e-mail may be used
3.   E-mail may only be used:
  
a.   to communicate with the Case Management Unit, including the lodging of progress monitoring information sheets;
b.   to communicate with the Registry in relation to the approval by the Judge of draft Order following a hearing before that Judge, queries on Orders made, requests to transfer a case into or out of the Commercial Court and general correspondence, including questions on practice;
Note:   Orders submitted for sealing must be submitted on paper.
c.   to communicate with the Listing Office in matters relating to listing (including the lodging of pre-trial checklists) and to lodge skeleton arguments with the listing office;
d.   to communicate with the Admiralty Marshal (except for out of hours business).
Note:   The Court cannot accept any other documents by e-mail at present. In particular e-mail cannot be used to lodge pleadings, affidavits, witness statements, case memoranda and lists of issues.
   Restrictions
4.   A party should not use e-mail to take any step in a claim which requires a fee to be paid for that step. If a party sends by e-mail a document for which a fee is payable upon filing, the document will be treated as not having been filed.
5.   Where a party sends or lodges a document by e-mail he should still comply with any rule or practice direction requiring the document to be served on any other person.
6.   Nothing in this guidance requires any person to accept service of a document by e-mail.
   Sending e-mails to the Court: addresses
7.   For Listing matters, the e-mail addresses are:
  
a.   For all matters relating to listing (except Friday applications), for the lodging of pre-trial check lists and for all skeleton arguments:
E-mail Commercial Court Listing
b.   For matters relating to Friday applications (except skeleton arguments)
E-mail Friday applications
8.   For matters relating to case management and the Case Management Unit (including the lodging of progress monitoring sheets), the address is:
E-mail Case Management
9.   For all correspondence for the Registry the address is:
E-mail Registry
10.   For all matters for the Admiralty Marshal or the business of the Admiralty Marshal, the address is:
E-mail Admiralty Marshal
   
   The subject line
11.   The subject line of the e-mail should contain only the following information which should be in the following order:
  
(a)   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:
(b)   Second, the claim number.
   
   Form and content of the e-mail
12.   Correspondence and documents may be sent either as text or attachments, except that documents required to be in a practice form should be sent in that form as attachments using one of the formats specified in paragraph 17.
13.   Parties must not use e-mail to send any document which exceeds 40 pages in the aggregate of normal typescript in length or 2 MB whichever is the smaller. Documents may not be subdivided to comply with this requirement.
14.   Where a party files a document by e-mail, he should not send a hard copy in addition, unless there are good reasons for so doing or the Court requires.
15.   Parties are advised to bear in mind when sending correspondence or documents of a confidential or sensitive nature that the security of e-mails cannot be guaranteed.
16.   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.
   
   Attachments
17.   Attachments should be in one of the following formats:
  
a.   Microsoft Word viewer/reader (.doc) in Word 1997 or later format
b.   Rich Text Format as (.rtf) files
c.   Plain/Formatted Text as (.txt) files
d.   Hypertext documents as (.htm) files
e.   Adobe Acrobat as (.pdf) files minimum viewer version 4
   
   Receipt of e-mail by the Court
18.   A document is not filed until the e-mail is received by the court at the addressee's computer terminal, whatever time it is shown to have been sent.
19.   The time of receipt of an e-mail at the addressee's computer terminal will be recorded.
20.   If an e-mail is received after 4 p.m. it will be treated as having been received on the next day the court office is open.
21.   No automatic acknowledgment of the receipt of an e-mail will be sent; the subject matter of the e-mail will be considered in the ordinary way. If a response to the subject matter of the e-mail is not received within a reasonable period, the sender should assume that the court has not received it and should send the e-mail again, or file the document by another means.
22.   Parties should not telephone to enquire as to the receipt of an e-mail. They should observe the procedure set out in paragraph 21.
   
   Replies to e-mails sent to the court
23.   The court will normally send any reply by e-mail to documents or correspondence sent by e-mail.
  
a.   All replies will be sent to the e-mail address from which the e-mail has been sent. If the sender wishes the reply to be copied to other parties or to another e-mail address used by the sender of the message, such e-mail addresses must be specified in the copy line. 193
b.   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.
c.   The e-mail should also contain in the body of the e-mail the name and telephone number of the sender.
   Note: It is important that each firm or set of chambers considers putting in place a system to deal with the absence of the individual who has sent the e-mail and to whom the Court will ordinarily reply. Two possible solutions are:
  
a.   A central mail box within each firm, either from which the e-mail is sent to the Court (and which will therefore receive the reply) or to which it is copied by the individual sender who sends it direct to the Court (and who will receive a copy of the reply);
b.   a second individual e-mail address within the firm to which the reply will be copied so that any reply can be monitored.
   It must be for each firm and set of chambers to devise its own system.
   Communication with the Clerk to a Commercial Judge
24.   No documents or correspondence should be sent by e-mail to the Clerk to a Commercial Judge dealing with a case, unless:
  
a.   an arrangement is made with the Clerk in each specific instance in which e-mail is to be used;
b.   if such an arrangement is made, the e-mail must be copied to the appropriate Listing Office Address, the Case Management Unit Address, The Registry Address, or the Admiralty Marshal Address, as the case may be.
   Note: Draft Orders for the approval of the Judge must be submitted through the Registry.
   
   11 March 2003