Stallard v Treasury Wine Estates Ltd (No 3)

IN THE SUPREME COURT OF VICTORIA Not Restricted

AT MELBOURNE

COMMERCIAL COURT
GROUP PROCEEDINGS LIST

S ECI 2020 01590

BRETT STALLARD in his capacity as Trustee for the Stallard Superannuation Fund	First Plaintiff
STEVEN NAPIER	Second Plaintiff
v
TREASURY WINE ESTATES LTD	Defendant

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JUDGE:	Nichols J
WHERE HELD:	Melbourne
DATE OF HEARING:	7 April 2022
DATE OF JUDGMENT:	18 May 2022
CASE MAY BE CITED AS:	Stallard & Anor v Treasury Wine Estates Ltd (No 3)
MEDIUM NEUTRAL CITATION:	[2022] VSC 246

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PRACTICE AND PROCEDURE – Production of discovered documents – Inspection of documents – Redaction – Whether justified – Whether parts of discovered documents may be redacted or masked for confidentiality and irrelevance – Supreme Court General Civil Procedure Rules 2015 (Vic) r 29.09 – Gunns Limited & Ors v Marr v Ors [2008] VSC 464 – Octagon Inc  v Hewitt & Anor (No 2) [2011] VSC 373.

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APPEARANCES:	Counsel	Solicitors
For the Plaintiffs	Mr A Pound SC with Ms E Levine	Slater and Gordon Lawyers Maurice Blackburn
For the Defendant	Mr M Garner with Mr G Kozminsky	Herbert Smith Freehills

HER HONOUR:

Background and introduction

1. Pursuant to orders made by consent on 2 December 2020 and 18 March 2021, the defendant was permitted to redact parts of documents produced in its initial tranche of discovery.  The orders provided that, ‘parts of the board minutes and papers…that are both confidential and not relevant to the issues raised by the consolidated statement of claim…may be redacted’.  The orders required the defendant to maintain a log documenting the basis for each redaction it applied.  The regime reflected in the orders was proposed by the parties as a means of facilitating discovery without the need to resolve a dispute between them concerning redactions, at least in the first instance.

1. The parties were unable to resolve their dispute and the plaintiffs applied for orders requiring the defendant (Treasury) to produce certain documents in unredacted form.  The dispute was crystalised by reference to sample documents that the parties agreed, exemplified the issues in dispute.  A significant part of the dispute was determined by a ruling given by Steffensen JR, on 5 April 2022.

1. The remining dispute concerns two sample documents (documents 5 and 6) which form part of papers prepared for meetings of the Treasury board in August and October 2018.  The disputed redactions have been made to one page in each document.  The plaintiffs contend that those pages ought be produced without redactions, and that ‘like information’ in documents already discovered be produced without redactions.

1. For completeness I will note that the defendant had, by its written submissions, resisted the plaintiffs’ proposed orders on the ground that the redacted material was irrelevant to the issues in dispute, but separately also on the basis that the plaintiffs’ pursuit of the redacted information was an attempt by the plaintiffs to ‘take advantage’ of an alleged (but not admitted) breach of confidence by the plaintiff Mr Napier and…