UNLESS there is an out of court settlement the �52 million law suit brought by Cambridgeshire County Council against guided bus contractors BAM Nuttall will not go to trial until January 2014.

In the meantime the county council Cabinet is to be asked next week to sanction some of the legal framework needed to bring the case forward.

Bob Menzies, head of major infrastructure delivery, will tell Cabinet on Tuesday that both parties have until December this year to disclose documents to each other.

“Collating, sorting and exchanging all the relevant documents is a complex and lengthy process,” he says. “As a result electronic processes are now used to manage this process, which is known as edisclosure.”

He says the council’s legal advisers have recommended a start be made on the edisclosure process so that the judge can be advised at the next case management conference on May 11 of progress.

Mr Menzies will be asking councillors to approve hiring suppliers to help produce the documents but since the cost is likely to exceed the threshold of �173,394 then special exemption will require approval.

“Provision for the cost of disclosure has been made in the estimate of legal costs in the current Busway cost forecast,” says Mr Menzies.