Bolton and Australian Securities and Investments Commission

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) and Bolton were parties before the Administrative Appeals Tribunal concerning ASIC's objections to Bolton's inspection of certain documents. The dispute centred on whether specific documents, categorised as A, B, and C, should be made available for inspection by Bolton, with ASIC raising objections based on various grounds.

The Tribunal was required to determine three categories of objections raised by ASIC: whether the documents were subject to professional legal privilege, whether the *Harman* implied undertaking applied, and ultimately, whether the documents were relevant to the issues in dispute between the parties. The Tribunal considered these objections in relation to the sample documents provided.

The Tribunal found that the category C documents were not relevant to the issues in dispute and therefore no inspection would be granted. For the category A documents, ASIC's objection was upheld in part, with specific documents and parts of documents being excluded from inspection. However, access to inspect the category B documents was granted to the applicant.