THE POST OFFICE GROUP LITIGATION - Judgment (No.3) - Common Issues

Oct 13, 2026

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High Court of Justice (Queen’s Bench Division) judgment in the Post Office Group Litigation, case HQ16X01238, dated 15 March 2019. Proceedings are conducted under a Group Litigation Order made 22 March 2017. The decision, designated “Judgment (No.3)” for “Common Issues,” addresses contractual and legal matters relevant to sub-postmasters and sets out an extensive framework, including introductions, common issues, lead claimants, witness evidence, and agreed appendices and flow charts for transaction corrections and branch trading statements.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryLetters

FormatPDF

Pages315

Reading Time1 h 50 min

AccessFree to download

A. Introduction

B. The Common Issues

C. The Lead Claimants

D. The Post Office Witnesses

E. The Factual Matrix

F. The Relationship between the Post Office and the NFSP

G. Contractual Formation

H. The Contract Terms

I. Express and Implied terms

J. Relational Contracts

K. Supply of Goods and Services Act

L. Agency, Accounting and Horizon

M. Suspension and Termination

N. Assistants

O. Onerous or Unusual Terms

P. Unfair Contract Terms

Q. Conclusions and Summary

R. Answers to the Common Issues

Case No: HQ16X01238 Neutral Citation Number: [2019] EWHC 606 (QB) THE POST OFFICE GROUP LITIGATION IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE QUEENS BENCH DIVISION Before : THE HONOURABLE MR JUSTICE FRASER Between : Alan Bates and Others -andPost Office Limited Rolls Building Fetter Lane London, EC4A 1NL Date: 15 March 2019 Claimant Defendant Judgment (No.3)“Common Issues” - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Patrick Green QC, Kathleen Donnelly, Henry Warwick, Ognjen Miletic and Reanne Mackenzie (instructed by Freeths LLP) for the Claimants David Cavender QC, Owain Draper and Gideon Cohen (instructed by Womble Bond Dickinson LLP) for the Defendant Hearing dates: 7, 8, 12, 13, 14, 15, 19, 20, 21, 22 and 26 November 2018 3, 4, 5 and 6 December 2018 Draft distributed to parties on 8 March 2019 Mr Justice Fraser: A. Introduction 1. This judgment is in the following parts: Paragraph no. A. Introduction 1 B. The Common Issues 44 C. The Lead Claimants 46 D. The Post Office Witnesses 365 E. The Factual Matrix 568 F. The Relationship between the Post Office and the National Federation of Sub Postmasters (“NFSP”) 574 G. Contractual Formation 599 H. The Contract Terms 607 I. Express and Implied terms 690 J. Relational Contracts 702 K. Supply of Goods and Services Act 769 L. Agency, Accounting and Horizon 782 M. Suspension and Termination 865 N. Assistants 938 O. Onerous or Unusual Terms 957 P. Unfair Contract Terms 1063 Q. Conclusions and Summary 1111 R. Answers to the Common Issues 1122 Appendix 1 : Extracts ofthe relevant SPMC terms Appendix 2: Extracts ofthe relevant NTC terms Appendix 3: Agreed Flow chart for Transaction Corrections Appendix 4: Agreed Flow chart for Branch Trading Statement Appendix 5: Appendix 2 of document dated 7 September 2012 entitled Branch Audit Trend Analysis YTD Q1 2012/2013 {G/7/6} 2. These proceedings are being conducted pursuant to a Group Litigation Order (“GLO”) made on 22 March 2017 by Senior Master Fontaine. Although there is an introduction to these proceedings in both my first and second written judgments in this matter, both of which concern procedural rather than substantive issues, which are at [2017] EWHC 2844 (QB) and [2018] EWHC 2698 (QB), I provide a similar introduction here. This isin order that this judgment can serve independently and be as comprehensible as possible to a reader with no background information to the litigation from those earlier judgments. 3. In general terms, in this Group Litigation there are a group of approximately 550 Claimants, who were all for the most part sub-postmasters, although a small number were Crown Office employees and managers/assistants. These have contracts of employment with the Defendant which are different to the contracts of the subpostmasters. Some of the Claimants therefore have a different status to the subpostmasters generally. However, it is the contracts with sub-postmasters that are relevant to this Common Issues trial. The Defendant, as is well known, operates the network of over 11,000 Post Office branches throughout the UK. The Defendant used to be called Post Office Counters Ltd, and changed its name in 2002 to simply Post Office Ltd. It refers to itself as “Post Office”, without the use of the definite article, and I was told (although none of the witnesses seemed particularly clear about this) that this may be for copyright reasons. In some of the documents, it referred to itself as POCL when it was called Post Office Counters Ltd. I shall refer to it in this judgment as the Post Office. It is state owned. 4. All of the Claimants (regardless of their precise individual status, and whether they were individually either sub-postmasters or Crown Office employees) at the material times were responsible for running branch Post Offices.“Material times” obviously means different periods for each claimant, as the dates upon which they became subpostmas

FAQs

What is the case number and the court for this judgment?

The case is HQ16X01238 and it is in the High Court of Justice, Queens Bench Division.

What does “Judgment (No.3)” for “Common Issues” refer to?

It is the third designated judgment addressing the “Common Issues” portion of the Group Litigation.

What are the Horizon system and its relevance mentioned in the judgment?

The judgment explains that the Post Office introduced a computerized Horizon accounting system (later Horizon Online) and it describes the system in the context of the litigation’s contractual and operational issues.

Oct 13, 2026

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