Bundle Submission for Court Hearing

[Hymie]

I am currently involved in litigation, with a court date looming. I am representing myself, without a solicitor.

At a directions hearing, directions were given that 4 bundles (witness statements, legal arguments etc) for the use of the court shall be provided by the party in the position of applicant (me) or by any other party that agrees to do so � with further information on the required layout/sequence of the documents.

The other party has sent me copies of witness statements and other documents they want to present before the court, and I have sent them a copy of my set. I have also hand delivered 4 copies of my witness statements/legal arguments to the court.

I telephoned the other party a few days ago to confirm that they have received my hand delivered document set � and was advised that my submission was not as required (with no further explanation), other than advise that I should discuss this with my solicitor (I'm not using one).

Having re-read paragraph two above, does this direction require me to submit both the defendants and my document set to the court (x4)? If so, this seems a strange requirement to me, since I could deliberately remove an important part of their submission (and claim they never submitted it).

Any advice would be gratefully received.

[Barmaid]

It is normally the Claimant's job to prepare the trial bundles. The trial bundles should be all the documents involved in the case and it should be agreed with the other side. you need to do 4 copies - 1 for you, 1 for the Def, 1 for the Judge and 1 for the witness box.

You should submit a trial bundle index to the other side for approval. The trial bundles should go as follows:-

Pleadings (ie statement of case, defence, reply and counterclaim)
Court orders
Witness statements and exhibits
Inter partes correspondence (but NOT offers to settle).

The bundles should be indexed in a ring binder with pages numbered at the bottom right.

[Hymie]

Thanks � Barmaid, for your informative answer.

As a novice, such a practice seems open to abuse by one side in the dispute.
I certainly would not trust the other party, not to exclude documentation I wanted to be included within the bundle.

Such an occurrence must have happened � with one side trying to gain an advantage through trickery.