Obtaining Evidence: Is Offshore Off-limits?

Donald Rumsfeld, the former US Defence Secretary, speaking at a press briefing in 2002, famously said: "As we know, there are known knowns: there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don't know we don't know." His remark has since been both mocked for its tortured expression and praised as a neat distillation of a complex philosophical truth. He was actually speaking about the situation in post-invasion Afghanistan, but he might equally have been talking about the conduct of a complex piece of cross-border litigation. In litigation, there are sometimes "unknown unknowns" – those facts which emerge completely out of the blue, that the participants never even realised they did not know, or needed to know, and that blow the case off track. The greater the experience of the firm and the individuals handling the case, the better will be