An urgent review of arrangements for storing court documents was ordered today after the discovery of missing legal papers in Northern Ireland yesterday.
The Court Service in Belfast today confirmed that documents - some of them more than 30 years old - turned up near Ballygawley, Co Tyrone.
Nobody has been arrested but police said they had not ruled out a crime.
In a statement, the Court Service said that in common with other British government departments, it engaged an independent contractor for the off-site storage of its archived records.
David Hanson, the minister of state at the Department of Justice in London which is responsible for the Northern Ireland Court Service, has commissioned an urgent review of the arrangements.
He said: "I am concerned to learn that old records, which were held for safe storage on behalf of the court service, were misplaced in this way."
It is understood police were alerted to the discovery of the documents at the end of last week when outbuildings at Todds Lane Road, outside Ballygawley, were searched.