January 31, 2016 Practice Directions
PRACTICE DIRECTION NO. 3 OF 2016
Anonymisation of DIFC Courts Judgments and Orders
Citation
This Practice Direction will come into effect on the date of signature. It may be cited as Practice Direction 3 of 2016 – Anonymisation of DIFC Courts Judgments and Orders and may be abbreviated to PD 3/2016.
1. This Practice Direction shall apply as regards all anonymised judgments and orders of the DIFC Courts, including those which have already been issued, as well as those which will be issued subsequent to the coming into effect of this Practice Direction.
2. Where a judgment or order issued by the DIFC Courts has been or will be redacted so as to ensure that parties’ names remain anonymous in the interests of confidentiality, neutral names shall be used in place of the actual names of the parties.
3. All judgments and orders which have been redacted previously with the use of single letters from the alphabet (for example A v B, X v Y) shall now be replaced by the use of neutral names.
System to be Implemented:
4. The following system shall henceforth be put in place in the context of redaction/anonymisation of DIFC Courts judgments and orders:
i) Claimant and Defendant names shall be replaced by female and male given names alternately;
ii) In circumstances where third party names also require redaction, they shall be replaced by female and male given names alternately;
iii) Where one of the parties is a legal person as opposed to an individual, “LLC,” “LLP” or a similar designation will be used to reflect that the party is not a natural person;
iv) When redacting DIFC Courts judgments and orders, the Court officer tasked with redaction shall refer to an online repository of given names chosen internally by the Registry;
v) This system will be applied to all redacted DIFC Courts judgments and orders which have been issued since 2010;
vi) Names shall be allocated in sequential alphabetical order, commencing with names beginning with the letter A in respect of redacted judgments and orders issued in 2010, with B for 2011 and so forth.
5. In the event of translation and/or enforcement outside the DIFC, the DIFC Courts will notify the persons concerned that the parties’ names have been redacted in accordance with this Practice Direction, and will provide a copy of this Practice Direction by way of clarification.
Dated this 31 day of January 2016
Chief Justice Michael Hwang
