Civil Claim Settlement Payouts (FOI)

​​Request

​Please confirm the overall number of civil claims settled and the total cost in settlement payouts in each financial year from 2019 to 2024, in relation to claims made to members of the public.

Particularly, a breakdown of how many of these claims were for malfeasance and the total amount paid in such cases would be useful. 

Response

The Judicial Greffe is the department which provides administrative support to the courts and which is scheduled under the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011.

Any information which is held by the Judicial Greffe only by virtue of a matter being brought to court is absolutely exempt from disclosure by virtue of Article 24 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011.

In any event, a complete body of the statistics requested are not held by the Judicial Greffe for the following reasons:

Civil claims do not always result in court proceedings being issued and therefore settlements can take place without a case having reached the courts. After proceedings are issued, a civil case can settle at any time. This may be a completely private matter between the parties and therefore the court may not become aware of the terms of the agreement. 

The details of a civil claim are not usually made public until all pleadings are complete and until any mediation process is complete. 

The court is also able to order that a particular claim or part of a claim is heard in private.  This means that the detail of such claims is not able to be made public.

The Law Officers’ Department which represents the government in any civil claims is not a Scheduled Public Authority under the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 and therefore does not have to respond to requests under that law.

Article applied

Article 24 - Court information

(1) Information is absolutely exempt information if it is held by a scheduled public authority only by virtue of being contained in a document –

(a) filed with, or otherwise placed in the custody of, a court; or

(b) served upon, or by, the scheduled public authority, in proceedings in a particular cause or matter.

(2) Information is absolutely exempt information if it is held by a scheduled public authority only by virtue of being contained in a document created by –

(a) a court; or

(b) a member of the administrative staff of a court, in proceedings in a particular cause or matter.

(3) Information is absolutely exempt information if it is held by a scheduled public authority only by virtue of being contained in a document –

(a) placed in the custody of; or

(b) created by, a person conducting an inquiry or arbitration, for the purposes of the inquiry or arbitration.

(4) In this Article –

“arbitration” means arbitration to which Part 2 of the Arbitration (Jersey) Law 1998 applies;

“court” includes any tribunal in which legal proceedings may be brought;

“inquiry” means an inquiry or a hearing held under an enactment;

“proceedings in a particular cause or matter” includes an inquest or post-mortem examination.​