PRACTICE DIRECTION - 3.8
ELECTRONIC BUNDLES AND SKELETON ARGUMENTS FOR ALL APPLICATIONS ON COMPANY, WINDING-UP AND BANKRUPTCY MATTERS
1. This Practice Direction sets out the requirements of hearing bundles[1] and Skeleton Arguments (together with Chronology of Events, Dramatis Personae[2] and draft Order) (“Skeleton Arguments”) and List of Authorities for the substantive hearings of all applications on company and bankruptcy matters listed before a Judge (except trials), that is:
1.1 Applications listed for 30 minutes or more;
1.2 Applications where the applicants intend to seek a substantive order, whether interlocutory or final order, from the Court; or
1.3 Case Management Conferences (“CMC”),
whether the applications are made by way of petition, originating summons, writ of summons or summons filed in winding-up proceedings or bankruptcy proceedings. Individual Judges assigned to hear the applications may give additional directions as appropriate.
2. All hearing bundles (“e-bundles”), Skeleton Arguments and List of Authorities should be prepared in electronic form, and shall be served in the following manner:
2.1 By lodging with the Court via the e-Lodgement platform at https://e-services.judiciary.hk/elodge/hc/ or by delivering a USB or other storage devices containing such documents to the clerk to the individual Judge; and
2.2 By delivering a USB or other storage devices containing such documents to all other parties to whom the application is directed. No hard copies or paper bundles are required to be served.
3. Unless otherwise directed by the Judge seised of the application, the time limits for serving e-bundles and Skeleton Arguments[3] are as follows:
3.1 For substantive hearing (including CMC), (a) the applicant should lodge and serve his e-bundles and Skeleton Arguments not less than 7 working days and 72 hours[4] respectively before the hearing; and (b) the respondent should lodge his Skeleton Arguments not less than 48 hours before the hearing.
3.2 For directions hearing listed for 15 minutes or more, (a) the applicant should lodge and serve his Skeleton Arguments not less than 72 hours before the hearing; and (b) the respondent should lodge his Skeleton Arguments not less than 48 hours before the hearing.
4. In addition to e-bundles, one set of Bundle Index, Skeleton Arguments and List of Authorities (excluding the authorities), in hard copies, should be lodged with the clerk to the individual Judge in accordance with the timetable for lodging the same. Other than these, no hard copies or paper bundles will be accepted.
5. All e-bundles should be processed by Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to make the text searchable and for ease of annotation.
6. All e-bundles should be prepared in the following manner:
6.1 The bundles should be agreed with the other party/parties[5].
6.2 The solicitors for the Plaintiff or the Applicant are responsible for preparing the e-bundles. If the hearing involves more than one action or more than one application, the solicitors for the party which brought the first action or application (as the case may be) should be responsible for preparing the e-bundles. Save with leave of the Court, the other party/parties should not lodge another set of e-bundles.
6.3 Each PDF file should contain an Index at the beginning.
6.4 Other than the Index, documents in each PDF file should be numbered in an ascending order and each item /bookmarked. The page numbers in the PDF file must correspond with the page numbers imprinted on the documents, so that when the user types “740” in the PDF file in Bundle C1, the page imprinted with “740” will appear on the screen.
6.5 There should be one PDF file for each category of documents and the files should be described as follows:
[A] Court Documents
[B] Affidavits / Witness Statements
[C] Exhibits / Documents
[D] Correspondence
[E] Expert Evidence
6.6 For Exhibit/Document bookmarks, a brief description of each item together with the exhibit number (if applicable) should be included.
6.7 There should be no duplication of documents in the PDF files. This applies to all hearings including those involving more than one action. If the exhibits are included in bundles in one action, the same exhibits should not be included in bundles for the other action(s), but cross-references should be provided in the index.
6.8 E-bundles should contain only the documents relevant to the application and to which the parties will need to refer in the course of their respective submissions. The Court may penalise the parties and/or their legal representatives on costs who insisted on including unnecessary documents in the bundles.
6.9 For a substantive hearing listed for up to 3 hours or up to 2 days, the bundles should not exceed 800 pages or 1,200 pages respectively. If the parties are not able to prepare the bundles within this limit, they must seek prior approval from the Court before lodging the same.
7 Except for trials or with leave of the Court, the Skeleton Arguments for all applications listed to be heard at the same hearing should not exceed 20 pages, using at least a font size of 14 and with normal page margins (i.e. 2.54 cm on the top, bottom, right and left of the page). Save for the purpose of corrections or updates, no further written submissions (including Supplemental Skeleton Arguments and Submissions in Reply) or supplemental List of Authorities will be accepted without leave of the Court.
8 The parties should submit their (a) Skeleton Arguments (in both PDF and WORD formats), and (b) List of Authorities in one PDF file, with each item separated by a PDF bookmark describing the authorities.
8.1 All bundle references in the Skeleton Arguments should be in the form of [Bundle/Tab/Page], e.g. [A/3/25].
8.2 All references to the items in the List of Authorities should be in the form of [Party # Item], e.g. [P#1].
8.3 Where a specific item has already been included in the List of Authorities submitted by an applicant, the respondent should refer to the item in the applicant’s List of Authorities, e.g. [A#3].
This Practice Direction shall take effect on 17 July 2023.
Dated this 30th day of June 2023.
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(Andrew Cheung) |
[1] In general, no hearing bundle is required for the first directions hearing of an originating summons or the callover hearing of an interlocutory summons, which does not require the Court to read many documents or make any substantive determination.
[2] No Chronology of Events or- Dramatis Personae needs to be submitted if (1) the application does not involve complex factual background or events, or (2) the application is of such urgency that it is not reasonably practicable for the applicant to prepare any Chronology of Events or Dramatis Personae
[3] In this paragraph, reference to “Skeleton Arguments” includes List of Authorities
[4] Excluding Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays. The same applies to “72 hours” and “48 hours” referred to in §3.1 and 3.2
[5] Where there is a disagreement as to the inclusion of a document, that document should be included in the e-bundle with the objection to its inclusion noted in the index