Non-party disclosure orders against trustees based outside England and Wales

There have been two interesting decisions this year concerning the availability of third-party disclosure orders against a foreign non-party. In the first case (Nix v Emerdata Ltd [2022] EWHC 718 (Comm), 18 February 2022), the High Court refused to grant permission to serve out of the jurisdiction an application for non-party disclosure against a New York law firm, on the basis that the court did not have jurisdiction to do so. In the second, subsequent, case (Gorbachev v Guriev [2022] EWCA Civ 1270, 30 September 2022), the Court of Appeal confirmed that the court did indeed have jurisdiction where the documents sought were located within England and Wales, in this case held by the non-party trustees’ English solicitors.