The High Court has directed C.J. Fallon Unlimited Company to provide documents it had agreed to disclose in a royalties and publishing dispute with author Fiona Holmes. The order followed her application for discovery; it did not decide the underlying claims or the parties’ final costs position.
Holmes, representing herself, says her former publisher mishandled royalties, author credits, subsidiary rights and promotion, causing lost royalties and earning opportunities. The company denies her claims. The discovery motion was heard on 11 February 2022. In a decision delivered on 20 May, Ms. Justice Bolger considered ten categories of documents sought by Holmes and the company’s earlier proposals to provide documents in several of those categories.
The judge directed discovery in line with the company’s solicitor’s letter of 1 December 2020, to be completed within eight weeks of the judgment. The company was also to provide the name of its discovery affidavit’s deponent. The judge found the company’s offers sufficient for the claims pleaded in relation to the education consultant, author credits, free distribution of materials, royalty payments, international sales, and the Voom competition and Wandsville copyright. Holmes confirmed she was no longer pursuing a separate category concerning documents furnished to her forensic accountants, as the company had confirmed it would provide them.
The court refused Holmes’s request for records of settlements over alleged workplace harassment and bullying at the company. The judge said the pleadings did not sufficiently raise claims of bullying, sexual harassment or misogynistic behaviour, and no relief was sought for such conduct. She also cited confidentiality and possible data-protection obligations involving third parties. The judge said a brief reference in the pleadings to the chief executive’s allegedly insulting tone, and a reference in replies to particulars to efforts to “bully, undermine and exclude” Holmes, did not bring those claims into the case.
The judge’s indicative view was that the company should receive the costs of Holmes’s motion because it had offered the discovery ultimately ordered before she issued her application. No order was made on the company’s separate discovery motion against Holmes, whose affidavit of discovery was then acceptable to the company. The parties could make further submissions on costs and final orders at a mention listed for 17 June at 10 a.m. The judgment does not state the year for that listed mention.