Various Claimants v Entain Plc [2026] EWHC 1511 (Comm)

[2026] EWHC 1511 (Comm)

Case No FL-2024-000010

FL-2025-000008, FL-2025-000009,

FL-2025-000010, FL-2025-000017

IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE

BUSINESS AND PROPERTY COURTS OF ENGLAND AND WALES

COMMERCIAL COURT (KBD)

FINANCIAL LIST

Venue Royal Courts of Justice, Rolls Building, Fetter Lane, London, EC4A 1NL

Date Wednesday, 17 June 2026

Before

Mr Justice Trower

Between

VARIOUS CLAIMANTS LISTED IN THE SCHEDULES TO THE CLAIM FORMSClaimants

ENTAIN PLCDefendant

- and –

Between

THE CROWN PROSECUTION SERVICEInterested Parties

KENNETH ALEXANDERInterested Parties

RICHARD COOPERInterested Parties

LEE FELDMANInterested Parties

ROBERT HOSKINInterested Parties

SHAIL PATEL KC, WILLIAM HARMAN and CHARLOTTE BAKER (instructed by Fox Williams LLP) for FW Claimants

PHILIP HINKS KC, DOMINIC KENNELY and AMY GREGG (instructed by Morgan Lewis &Bockius (UK) LLP) for MLB Claimants

RICHARD HANDYSIDE KC, REBECCA LOVERIDGE and JOSEPH LEECH (instructed by Clifford Chance) for Defendant

RICHARD HOYLE and HAL WATSON instructed by and for Crown Prosecution Service

ADRIAN DARBISHIRE KC and LEONORA SAGAN (instructed by Simmons & Simmons LLP) for Second, Third and Fourth Interested Parties

ALISON POPLE KC and AARON WATKINS (instructed by Enyo Law LLP) for Fifth Interested Party

Hearing Hearing dates: 16/06/2026 - 18/06/2026

RULING

Wednesday, 17 June 2026

[1]The issue with which this ruling is concerned is whether the Court should make a filing modification order, or FMO, pursuant to para.13(b) of CPR PD 51ZH. I shall also give a brief explanation of why I ruled at the hearing yesterday that I would make a reporting restriction order (“RRO”) under s.4(2) of the Contempt of Court Act 1981.

[2]The proposal, so far as the FMO is concerned, is to waive the Filing Requirement in relation to all or any of the documents referred to in paragraph 8 of PD 51ZH, being documents which have been used or referred to at a hearing in public in these proceedings. PD 51ZH defines these as Public Domain Documents. At the conclusion of the argument yesterday, I indicated that I would make an FMO. These are my reasons for doing so.

[3]The issue has arisen on an application made by the Crown Prosecution Service (“CPS”) in proceedings brought by two separately represented groups of shareholder claimants against Entain Plc (“Entain”) under s.90 and 90A of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000. It is alleged that Entain engaged in historic misconduct in respect of its business in Turkey, involving a failure to prevent the payment of bribes in connection with that business. It is said that this was done with the knowledge of a number of persons discharging managerial responsibilities (“PDMRs”) at Entain.

[4]The claimants allege that they relied on certain statements or omissions in the information that Entain published to the market when they acquired, held or sold their shares, and that they have suffered loss as a consequence of that reliance. The CPS’s interest in the application arises because a number of the PDMRs whom the claimants name in their pleadings have been charged with criminal offences said to arise in connection with some of the same misconduct that is alleged in these claims.

[5]Three separate criminal trials of those allegations have been listed for dates from February 2028 to March 2029. Although the parties are all now agreed that the trial of these proceedings should not commence until May 2029, many preparatory steps will be taken, and doubtless many interlocutory hearings will be held, during the period leading up to and during the course of the criminal trials.

[6]The application made by the CPS reflected its concern that appropriate measures be taken to ensure that the fairness of the criminal trials is not jeopardised by steps taken in these proceedings.

[7]Furthermore, a material part of the information on which the claimants rely in making their claims in these proceedings is derived from a deferred prosecution agreement entered into between Entain and the CPS on 5 December 2023 (“the DPA”), and its associated statement of facts. On the day the DPA was entered into, the President of the King’s Bench Division (“PKBD”) made an order restricting dissemination of the statement of facts and the full judgment explaining the basis on which she had approved the DPA, together with any report of the hearing.

[8]It is also right to mention two further matters. The first is that at the beginning of this hearing, I made an interim RRO. The second is that, on 14 November 2025, Mr Justice Butcher made an order under CPR 5.4C(4)(a) in these proceedings that a non-party (other than the CPS and the defendants in the criminal proceedings) may not obtain any copy of Entain’s defence from the court file.

[9]Reverting to CPR PD 51ZH, the Filing Requirement is an obligation under paragraph 10 of that PD to file any Public Domain Document within a specified period. The consequence of the filing is specified in paragraph 12 of the PD: any third party may take copies of that Public Domain Document from the public access CE-File.

[10]The Court is empowered by paragraph 13 of PD 51ZH to qualify or waive the Filing Requirement by making an FMO. The question of whether the Court should do so in the present case arises in circumstances in which it is agreed by all parties represented in court that there is a significant overlap between the issues which arise in these proceedings and the issues which arise in the criminal proceedings, to which the claimants and defendants in these proceedings are not themselves party.

[11]I have therefore heard submissions on the approach to the exercise of the court’s power under paragraph 13(b) in circumstances in which the parties to the criminal proceedings all agree that there is a material risk that the public disclosure of information contained in unredacted versions of the Public Domain Documents required to be filed in these proceedings might compromise the fair conduct of the criminal proceedings. Those who have made submissions have included the CPS and some of the defendants to the criminal proceedings.

[12]CPR PD 51ZH is a pilot scheme authorised by CPR 51.2. It makes provision for the introduction of a document filing scheme to facilitate public access in the specific courts identified in paragraph 1(b) of the PD; that is, the Commercial Court, the London Circuit Commercial Court and the Financial List. It extends to third parties the right to access documents beyond the categories for which provision is currently made by the CPR.

[13]In particular, CPR PD 51ZH extends third-party inspection rights to a list of documents set out in paragraph 8 of the PD, which is more extensive than the statements of case and orders to which CPR 5.4C applies more generally. Those documents comprise skeleton arguments, written submissions, witness statements and affidavits, experts’ reports and the appendices, and any other document or documents critical to the understanding of the hearing ordered by a judge to be a public domain document. It is also open to the parties to agree that a particular document be a public domain document.

[14]The introduction of this PD as a pilot, to take effect from 1 January this year, is an important change. It provides that, instead of having to make an application under CPR 5.4C to which the Court will apply the principles explained by the Supreme Court in Dring v Cape Intermediate

[2020] AC 629

(“Dring”), non-parties are granted a legal right to inspect a Public Domain Document. This legal right is subject to an exception where an FMO has been made.

[15]CPR PD 51ZH drafted in broad terms and does not identify the factors which the court is required to take into account when considering whether or not to make an FMO. Furthermore, none of the parties were able to identify any previous decision dealing with the approach which the court should take to exercising its power to do so. That is not particularly surprising in circumstances in which the PD only applies to a limited category of cases and has only been in force since the beginning of this year.

[16]However, it seems to me that the underlying principles must still draw heavily on those explained in Dring, adapted to reflect the procedures introduced by the PD. In particular, the Court must take into account the fact that the starting point is that the grant of access to a wider range of documents without a court order is now treated by the CPR as an appropriate means by which the open justice principle is to be advanced in the designated courts.

[17]This seeks to reflect and bolster the important public policy that as much as possible of proceedings such as these shareholder proceedings, should be conducted in public. As Dring makes clear, transparency in the conduct of litigation is an important part of the process of ensuring that justice is done.

[18]But it is also the case that the power to make an FMO gives the Court a discretion to modify the rights which third parties otherwise have under CPR PD 51ZH. In exercising that discretion, the court must balance on the one hand the value of the information in question in advancing the open justice principle against, amongst other things, the risk of harm which uncontrolled disclosure may cause to the maintenance of an effective judicial process or to the legitimate interests of others (cf Dring at [45]).

[19]Although the presumption as to how that is to be achieved has now changed in the designated courts to which CPR 51ZH applies, the essential underlying principles remain the same. The legitimate interests of others referred to by Baroness Hale in Dring include the interests of those engaged in the contemporaneous conduct of criminal proceedings dealing with the same events and circumstances.

[20]It seems to me that the starting point must be that, if the exercise by third parties of their rights under CPR PD 51ZH increases the risk of information prejudicial to the fair conduct of the criminal proceedings leaking into the public domain, that should weigh heavily in the balance in favour of making an FMO (suitably tailored to address the risk). In practice, this means that in circumstances in which there is substantial and significant overlap between the criminal proceedings and the shareholder proceedings, serious consideration must be given to restricting the unrestricted access which the public might otherwise enjoy to the documents filed in these proceedings.

[21]It is relevant to the exercise of the discretion that the obligation to file a Public Domain Document only arises where a document has already entered the public domain by being referred to at a hearing in public (paragraph 7 of the PD). It is also relevant, as the Guidance Note to PD 51ZH makes clear, that the PD is only designed to bring within the scheme documents that can be made readily available without imposing an undue burden on the parties or the Court. This is a point which is emphasised in two paragraphs of the Guidance Note (7 and 19).

[22]In carrying out the necessary balancing exercise, I was much assisted by detailed submissions made by the CPS on the importance of open justice and the significant weight which needed to be attributed to its maintenance. However, all parties, including the CPS, accepted, and I agree, that it is likely that there will be a need to redact a material amount of information from any Public Domain Documents which are filed in these proceedings. Notwithstanding the RRO, to do so would give rise to a material risk that information prejudicial to the integrity of the criminal proceedings might end up in the public domain and become available to jurors in due course.

[23]Much of the argument, therefore, centred on an appropriate redaction process. One of the principal difficulties is that the parties in the current proceedings are not parties to the criminal proceedings, and are therefore not well equipped to form an accurate view of what redactions may be necessary. I consider that there is force in the concerns which were expressed by the parties to these proceedings that the structure to be adopted should not impose on them the burden of making decisions on this point. I also recognise that it would not normally be part of the CPS’s role to act as gatekeeper to ensure that appropriate redactions are made to documents which would otherwise be made publicly available in associated civil proceedings.

[24]I therefore decided during the course of the hearing yesterday that the right balance would be struck if I were to make an order under paragraph 13(b) of CPR PD 51ZH waiving the Filing Requirement, but exercising the court’s power under paragraph 13(e) to require the parties to include a placeholder on the public access CE-Files in relation to this case.

[25]That placeholder must identify the date and nature of the document, which has become a Public Domain Document, the date and nature of the hearing at which it was first used or referred to in public and the party by whom it was filed. The placeholder must also draw specific attention to the rights of any non-party to make an application under PD 51ZH, paragraph 19, a paragraph which also deals with the procedure for doing so.

[26]I shall also direct that, if any such application is made, it must be notified as soon as reasonably practicable to the CPS and the defendants to the criminal proceedings. The purpose of that notification would be to enable all interested parties to participate, should they consider it appropriate to do so, both on the substance of the application and in any discussions as to the redactions required to ensure the integrity of the criminal proceedings.

[27]I think that an FMO in this form is necessary, even though I have also indicated my intention to make an order under s.4(2) of the Contempt of Court Act 1981. I was satisfied that an RRO was necessary to avoid the substantial risk of prejudice to the administration of justice in the criminal proceedings arising out of the publication of any report of these proceedings.

[28]One of the reasons I considered it appropriate to make such an order was to ensure that this Court granted relief which was supportive of and consistent with the relief already granted by the PKBD. The CPS agreed with all other parties that relief under s.4(2) would be necessary at some stage but queried whether now is the right time. I am satisfied that it is. Not to grasp the nettle now would have increased the risk of prejudicial leakage for no good reason and is consistent with good case management.

[29]In my judgment, the FMO, taken together with the RRO and the listing of the trial after the third criminal trial, strikes the right balance between maintaining the open justice principle and minimising the risk of information prejudicial to the criminal proceedings leaking into the public domain. I should add that the form of RRO has now been agreed between the CPS and the individual defendants in the criminal proceedings. ______________