- £90 million Lord Street legal battle returns to the Isle of Man High Court on Thursday, 3 September
- Last hearing revealed a dedicated, but previously unknown about government email cache
- The ‘Lower Douglas’ government inbox was said to contain the core correspondence about the controversial redevelopment
- Claimant’s lawyer said the inbox was disclosed only two days before the November hearing and she had not had time to examine it
- Government told court it had disclosed the entirety of the account
- First Deemster Andrew Corlett warned lawyers to “grab hold of disclosure and deal with it”
- Judge also questioned why a claim said to be worth £50–90 million had still not been formally quantified
- A proposed April-to-July 2026 trial window has now passed as the sprawling dispute returns to court
When the £90 million Lord Street case returns to the Isle of Man High Court next Thursday, the dispute will pick up where an extraordinary hearing last November left off.
Government lawyers are expected to still be fighting over documents that they have not yet disclosed, or have been slow to reveal – despite eight years of litigation.
The judge is likely to push for quicker progress – and fundamental questions about the scale of the claim may still remain unresolved.
The last hearing, on 5 November 2025, was supposed to address disclosure in the long-running battle between developer Sondica Group Inc and the Isle of Man Government, and consultants Lambert Smith Hampton.
Instead, the case management conference exposed another remarkable twist.
The court was told of the existence of a dedicated Lower Douglas government email account, created specifically for the redevelopment project at the heart of the dispute.
According to Sondica’s advocate Victoria Unsworth, the account was not simply another government inbox.
She told First Deemster Andrew Corlett that “everything was being copied into the Lower Douglas email address”.
The folder was, she said, “the one email account that was set up for this project” and therefore an account in which the central correspondence surrounding the scheme should have been captured.
That made what happened next particularly significant.
Despite years of battles over disclosure, Ms Unsworth said the contents of the account had only been handed over by the Attorney General’s Chambers on the Monday afternoon immediately before the Wednesday hearing.
She had spent much of the intervening period in court.
As a result, Ms Unsworth told the judge that she had simply not had the opportunity to examine the disclosure in detail.
Furthermore, there was another obstacle.
The documents had been placed on SharePoint – a web-based collaboration and document management platform – but the files themselves were not named, leaving the claimant’s legal team with what Ms Unsworth described as only “some semblance of an index”.
Sondica therefore asked for the Lower Douglas account to be explicitly incorporated into the court’s disclosure order.
The purpose was straightforward: to remove future argument about whether everything from the project-specific account had actually been handed over.
For the government, advocate Joseph Quinn said progress had been made.
He told the court that the government defendants had now “disclosed the entirety of the Lower Douglas inbox”.
But the row was only one part of a much bigger disclosure battle.
Sondica has repeatedly complained about missing meeting minutes, incomplete document trails and disputed emails.
Ms Unsworth told the November hearing that the parties had been engaged in the disclosure exercise since February 2019, describing documents as having been “drip fed” while lists of material believed to be outstanding were repeatedly sent back to the Attorney General’s Chambers.
The government has rejected allegations that documents were deliberately tampered with.
The Attorney General’s Chambers told the November hearing there was “no evidence of tampering”, pointing to technical explanations for discrepancies in certain emails.
First Deemster Corlett made clear that he wanted the disclosure war brought under control.
Referring to an earlier judgment, he warned that the court did not have the resources or time to deal endlessly with contested disclosure applications and told the advocates they needed to “grab hold of disclosure and deal with it”.
The disclosure application was eventually adjourned at Sondica’s request.
But another major issue emerged before the hearing ended.
How much is the case actually worth?
Sondica’s claim has repeatedly been described as worth somewhere between £50 million and £90 million.
Yet the First Deemster pointed out that the damages had still not been formally set out in the pleadings.
“Your claim is not quantified at all,” he told Ms Unsworth, observing that there were no particulars of loss in the pleadings.
Ms Unsworth said the claimant’s expert evidence on quantum was “pretty much finalised” and explained that damages would ultimately depend upon expert calculations concerning either the lost profit from the development or the loss of the chance to make that profit.
Mr Quinn was more critical.
He pointed to what he described as a £50 million to £90 million claim with no schedule of loss, arguing that the absence of supporting figures made serious alternative dispute resolution difficult.
Ms Unsworth responded that Sondica was not obliged to file a schedule of loss in the form being suggested and said its expert report would be disclosed when ready.
She also made clear that resolving the case without trial remained a priority.
The judge, meanwhile, was already looking towards the endgame.
He told the court he was “anxious to get this matter listed for a trial”.
The hearing was told that Sondica had proposed a trial window between April and July 2026, saying it wanted the case dealt with as soon as possible.
That proposed window has now passed.
Instead, the parties will return to court again on Thursday, 3 September.
And they return with the questions raised at the last hearing still hanging heavily over the case.
Has the full documentary record of the Lord Street affair finally been disclosed?
What did the dedicated Lower Douglas account reveal?
Have the gaps identified by Sondica been resolved?
And after years of litigation over a claim repeatedly valued at as much as £90 million, has the claimant now put a definitive figure – and the evidence supporting it – before the court?
The Lord Street battle has already lasted years longer than anyone anticipated.
Next Thursday, First Deemster Corlett will once again be faced with a case he made clear last November he wants moved towards a conclusion.
ENDS
