17 Feb 2023
The Court dismissed LPF's consolidation application in exercise of discretion and set aside most confidentiality claims; the plaintiffs and Mr Whitley were held to be the successful parties for costs under r 14.2(1)(a); costs were fixed on a 2B scale as the matters were of average complexity and no r 14.7 reductions were warranted, resulting in specified awards against LPF.
25 Jan 2023
Full McConnell Group board documents (Board minutes, Executive Leadership minutes, Board reports, Managing Director's reports) and audit committee minutes for Jan 2011–Mar 2018 are relevant within r 8.7 and r 8.19 and must be produced; the defendants must provide a rule‑compliant affidavit giving further detail of privileged groups and evidencing confidentiality claims and proposed inspection/use limits; the burden and cost of review are proportionate and justified given importance to pleaded issues.
6 Aug 2020
Respondents' discovery compliance was deficient and caused unnecessary proceedings, but the applicant did not establish beyond reasonable doubt that respondents knowingly and without reasonable excuse disobeyed orders; therefore no contempt finding or fines were imposed; costs were awarded to the applicant with a 50% uplift from scale to reflect respondents' contribution to unnecessary time and expense; leave reserved to seek further contempt or indemnity costs if new evidence justifies it, and applicant ordered to file a short costs schedule to quantify the award.
25 Nov 2019
The court ordered limited but specific discovery: defendants must produce the Ark term loan agreement (16 June 2011), all of Eric's memoranda of wishes (subject to redaction to matters relevant to sale/use of the property or distributions to Verna), and Eric's will dated 1 April 2004 (subject to redaction), and provide terms of the ANZ loan; defendants must file a sworn supplementary affidavit identifying existence or absence of documents in specified categories (claims by Verna against the Trust, Eric's medical records from 1 Jan 2014 to present regarding capacity, documents showing purposes…
20 Nov 2019
The defendants failed to satisfy the threshold on r 5.45(1)(b); there was insufficient credible evidence that the plaintiff would be unable to meet a likely costs award (~$60,000), so the security for costs application was dismissed. The plaintiff, as a registered beneficiary and former trustee, is entitled to disclosure of trust documents absent a valid claim of litigation privilege; accordingly the court allowed the plaintiff's r 8.25 challenge to solicitor-client privilege in the affidavit of documents sworn by Mr Kamo and ordered discovery subject to retention of legitimate litigation pri…
21 May 2018
Applying the s 69 Evidence Act 2006 criteria and following the approach taken by Dobson J, the Court concluded that disclosure would likely cause significant harm by identifying suspects/persons of interest, revealing confidential sources or investigative methods; accordingly the Court directed that documents listed in Part 3 remain confidential in whole and those in Part 4 remain confidential in part, while noting some documents are irrelevant or have already been disclosed.
2 Jul 2015
The Court upheld multiple confidentiality and privilege claims where disclosure would reveal police investigative techniques or informant identity, confirmed that the Police must demonstrate confidentiality but accepted practical constraints (eg inaudible transcript passages and technical limits) allowing limited disclosure with protections, upheld legal professional and litigation privilege for specified documents (eg POL.00002.0062), and directed the Police to make further discovery of documents referring to the identified individual where those documents were created as a direct result of…
24 Aug 2009
Documents between the defendants and the third party that could bear on the genuineness of the defendants' justification for treating the supply agreement with the plaintiff as at an end, and documents evidencing orders and invoices from the third party that could quantify plaintiff's loss, are discoverable; confidentiality claims are set aside as to dates and identity of parties but may be upheld only to the extent of protecting commercially sensitive third‑party costings and amounts by redaction; plaintiff must discover financial records relevant to its claimed losses subject to redaction o…
19 Dec 2006
The liquidator was entitled to reasonable costs for steps necessary to bring his concerns to the Court and for complying with the discovery order, but he went beyond what was necessary by effectively opposing the application; therefore only a limited allowance for compliance costs is recoverable ($1,000) and the plaintiff, as successful party on the confidentiality application, is entitled to scale costs of $1,360 plus the filing fee of $600, resulting in a net award to the plaintiff of $960 payable within 21 days.