$re = '/(^[a-z][a-z\'&\(\) ]+\bv\b[a-z&\'\(\) ]+(?:.*?) \[?\d+ \w+ \d{4}\]?)/mis';
$str = 'R J BRUCE & OTHERS V B J & W L A EDWARDS And Ors CA CA19/02 27 February 2003
H v DIRECTOR OF PROCEEDINGS [2014] NZHC 1031 [16 May 2014]
GREGORY LANCASTER AND JOHN HENRY HUNTER V CULLEN INVESTMENTS LIMITED AND
ERIC JOHN WATSON CA CA51/03 26 May 2003';
preg_match_all($re, $str, $matches, PREG_SET_ORDER, 0);
// Print the entire match result
var_dump($matches);
Please keep in mind that these code samples are automatically generated and are not guaranteed to work. If you find any syntax errors, feel free to submit a bug report. For a full regex reference for PHP, please visit: http://php.net/manual/en/ref.pcre.php