Guo v PricewaterhouseCoopers

In the High Court of New Zealand, Auckland Registry, Yan Guo sought to appeal a decision from the Human Rights Review Tribunal, which dismissed her application for further discovery against PricewaterhouseCoopers. The appeal was dismissed by the court, and the matter now pertains to the costs associated with the appeal. The legal issues before the court were whether the appeal was justified and whether costs should be awarded to PricewaterhouseCoopers.

The court found that PricewaterhouseCoopers had promptly informed Guo of the lack of jurisdiction for her appeal and invited her to withdraw it. Despite this, Guo persisted with the appeal, leading to an application to strike out the appeal. When Guo eventually withdrew the appeal, PricewaterhouseCoopers had already incurred costs, and therefore, the court ruled that costs should follow the event. The court determined that the appropriate amount of costs was slightly less than what PricewaterhouseCoopers sought, calculated on a 2A basis rather than a 2B basis.

The court ordered that Guo is to pay PricewaterhouseCoopers costs in the sum of $2,390.00, together with disbursements in the sum of $173.91, making a total of $2,563.91.