My court case has been hidden and never published online

[Mrijaz]

I had a court case in 2018, it was at the high court rolls building fetter lane. I was challenged by my landlord and my business was taken away from me. I was basically told to leave.

my business was a cafe turning over around £50,000 a month, we had a 10 year lease.. so the claim would’ve been for a lot of money..

I spent around £150,000 trying to defend the claim against me. We used all our business savings, we borrowed money from friends and family to pay for this claim as we thought we had a very high chance of winning. The landlord falsified my signature to add a break clause inside the lease so have me removed. The landlord sold the property for millions..

the first trial was recorded and was a fair trial here is the link: https://www.casemine.com/judgement/u...94e02c1b892c75

This trial was for an ‘expedition’ to speed up the court process. This one seemed fair.. and it was recorded on the public file.

Now my attention comes to the main trial, it was 3 days long I attended along with my brother and my father who gave evidence on all three dates. On the day of arrival at the court, our case wasn’t anywhere on the court list, so we had to ask in the office where our case would be heard.. they told us to go to a certain court room. It was a long 3 days trial.. everything went against us even though we had so much evidence to prove our point… now this judgement that I had received has the neutral citation number missing.. it still states ‘Double click here to enter title’ which seems odd and ever since I haven’t been able to see the trial anywhere on public records. The court told me that there was costs of the winning party of around £300,000 which they never since then asked me for either..

It seems to me as if the case has just disappeared and was hidden from the public as the points made surely would raise a few eyebrows..

what should I do? anyone I speak to tells me to move on from it but it’s eating me away and i know it was years ago but I just need some advice. How is this justice if the case isn’t published anywhere?

[R0b]

So the obvious question, have you spoken to the court about the neutral citation?

Also, do not confuse a neutral citation with a published judgment. Historically, judgments were published in various law reports and neutral citations were introduced at a time when electronic sources of judgments became available so that you did not need to go to a particular law report - which would inevitably cost you a subscription fee. Some law reports include the Weekly Law Reports, All England Law Reports, Lloyd's Law Reports etc.

Not all High Court decisions are published officially by the court, only those that are considered of relevant importance and you will see them on the judiciary website or on BAILLI. Otherwise cases that are not published are known as unreported judgments. It is possible that other law reports may publish the judgment by obtaining a transcript and the citation will differ.

It may also be that if the decision is a relatively recent one and is considered important enough to publish, the court may not have got round to publishing it just yet.