Five things a judgment can tell you, and what it cannot

A published judgment is one of the few documents in which a court explains, in its own words, how it decided a dispute. When the dispute involves a council, an NHS body or a company, it is a useful primary record. It is also easy to over-read. This note sets out five things a judgment can tell you, then what it cannot. The guide to finding court judgments and tribunal decisions covers where they are published and how to search.

1. The court and the date

The header names the court or tribunal, the date of judgment and the neutral citation, such as [2024] EWHC 123 (KB). The court tells you how serious and how final the decision is: a tribunal of first instance, the High Court, or the Court of Appeal. The date tells you the position on that day. A council or company may have changed since.

2. The role of each party

Every party has a role: claimant, defendant, appellant, respondent or interested party. A council can be any of them. Being named in the title does not mean being the party the case was about, and an interested party is usually someone affected by the outcome who took part. Read the role before you describe the party.

3. The question the court was asked

Courts decide the question put to them, and the opening paragraphs state it. It may be whether a decision was lawful, how a contract should be read, whether a notice was valid or whether a claim was brought in time. A judgment on a narrow question is not a ruling on everything else the parties disagree about.

4. The order

The order is the end of the judgment: what the court granted, dismissed or sent back, and sometimes who pays the costs. It is the decision. The reasons explain it, and they can be long. If you quote one thing, quote the order and say where it appears.

5. The documents behind it

Judgments refer to other records: a council decision, a committee report, a contract notice, a company's accounts, a statute. Each is a pointer to a primary document you can often find yourself. The guide to council minutes explains how a decision is recorded, and the guide to company numbers explains how to check which company is meant.

What a judgment cannot tell you

It cannot tell you the whole story. A court records what was argued before it, in the proceedings before it. Many disputes are settled, withdrawn or decided without a written judgment, and many written judgments are not published. Published judgments are only part of the work of the courts and tribunals, so no search of them is a record of everything a body or company has been involved in.

It cannot tell you that two similar names are one entity. A group has a parent and subsidiaries with separate company numbers, and a judgment names the one that was before the court. It cannot tell you what happened afterwards: whether the decision was appealed, followed or overtaken by a new one. And it cannot tell you, by itself, how a body is run. One decision on one question is one decision on one question.

Using it

Cite the neutral citation and the paragraph, describe the party by its role, and keep the date. On Institrace, the Legal page shows the courts and tribunals held, with counts, and Legal records explains the licence under which judgments are re-used. Signed in, judgments and tribunal decisions appear on the record of the body or company they name, with a link to the original.