
Resolving disputes through computer evidence: lessons from the Post Office Trial - throw0101a
https://www.benthamsgaze.org/2019/12/19/resolving-disputes-through-computer-evidence-lessons-from-the-post-office-trial/
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throw0101a
The claimants successfully argued that software in question was buggy, and
these bugs caused them financial problems:

> _This situation, however unsatisfactory, is still far better than the
> payment disputes I see in practice. In the Post Office trial, a large
> proportion of the eye-watering costs were spent on forcing Post Office
> Limited to disclose documentation on Horizon’s bugs, which technical experts
> could then summarise to the judge. Every payment system dispute I’ve seen
> has made do with bland assertions that the computer system is working
> properly, which is the presumption in English law.[1] The Post Office trial
> demonstrates how wrong the presumption can be, that overturning it in
> litigation is so expensive that little compensation is left, and even then
> the resulting situation gives nobody much satisfaction._

[1] states:

> _In 1997, the [UK] Law Commission decided that writers of software code
> wrote perfect code, because it introduced the presumption, that included
> computers by implication (or more accurately, digital data), that, ‘In the
> absence of evidence to the contrary, the courts will presume that mechanical
> instruments were in order at the material time’. Politicians decided to
> replicate the presumption for criminal proceedings by passing section 129(2)
> of the Criminal Justice Act 2003._

> _No evidence was put forward by the Law Commission to substantiate the
> assertion that computers were ‘reliable’ (this is the word that is often
> used), and proposals for reform have not been take up._

[1] [https://ials.blogs.sas.ac.uk/2019/06/25/the-use-of-the-
word-...](https://ials.blogs.sas.ac.uk/2019/06/25/the-use-of-the-word-robust-
to-describe-software-code/)

