In the fight against fraud and malfeasance, the English Court is often asked to grant intrusive orders in order to assist claimants in protecting their interests. If, in the perhaps over-used phrase, the worldwide freezing order is the ‘nuclear weapon’ of civil litigation, then search and seizure orders (SSOs) are a more targeted and nuanced scalpel, designed to identify and preserve evidence in a defendant’s possession, that may otherwise be destroyed and make it difficult (if not impossible) for a claimant to prove their case. Paul Johnson and Philip Gardner discuss important developments in case law relating to SSOs and how the English Court will approach the disclosure process following SSOs.
