Preston v Nikolaidis

In *Preston v Nikolaidis*, heard by Whealy JA in the Court of Appeal of New South Wales, the applicant sought an interlocutory order for the inspection of documents prior to the hearing of a leave application. The applicant alleged that these documents had been fraudulently created to inflate assessment costs and raised the question of whether the applicant was personally liable for the respondents' bills of costs.

The central legal issue before the court was whether the applicant had established a sufficient basis to warrant the interlocutory order for document inspection. This involved considering the speculative nature of the application and whether the applicant's claim for personal liability for costs justified the extraordinary measure of pre-hearing document discovery.

Whealy JA declined to make the order sought, finding that the application was speculative and that the applicant had not demonstrated a compelling reason for the early inspection of documents. The court reasoned that the applicant had not met the threshold required for such an order, particularly in the context of an interlocutory application preceding a substantive leave hearing.

Consequently, the court ordered the applicant to pay the respondents' costs of the notice of motion and granted liberty to apply on three days' notice.