Macquarie Bank and members of Storm Financial class actions have been ordered to split the bill of Challenger's court costs after failing in their request to gain access to Challenger company documents.
On 16 July, Federal Court Justice John Reeves ordered Macquarie Bank and investors of two Storm class actions to equally cover the costs of two court hearings, on 1 March and 5 April 2012, court documents said.
The exact amount the parties must pay was not disclosed.
The judgment follows a hearing in April where Challenger and Challenger Managed Investments succeeded in blocking Macquarie and the legal teams behind two Storm class actions from accessing a series of company documents.
In March, legal representatives for Challenger objected to a ruling in the Brisbane registry of the Federal Court that would give the parties the chance to view company documents regarding Storm, court papers said.
The initial ruling was made as part of a discovery plan agreed between all parties involved in the case, including ASIC, the papers, released on 5 April, said.
As part of the agreement, parties were given the go-ahead to request documents from the corporate regulator, a situation that was deemed unusual.
In this particular case, ASIC was the key regulator that investigated the 2009 collapse of the financial advisory group and was also the party responsible for commencing the court proceedings.
During the course of its 2009 and 2010 Storm investigations, ASIC obtained 27,700 documents from Challenger, the papers said.
Under one specific part of the agreement, ASIC was ordered to provide parties and non-parties who produced documents, as well as those who were examined under section 19 of the ASIC Act and those examined by external administrators, access to documents contained in "the Ringtail Database and the NUIX Database".
ASIC and parties related to the proceedings were allowed to refuse access to the documents by third parties in writing, the court papers said.
Challenger's objections were raised following a request by Macquarie and the legal team behind the two class actions for access to two categories of documents. Challenger questioned the relevance of the third-party requests.
In handing down his verdict, Reeves said the class action parties accepted they and Macquarie should bear some part of Challenger's costs of the April rulings.
However, he said that like Macquarie, the parties believed a substantial proportion of the hearing on 1 March 2012 involved the issue of relevance in gaining access to two categories of Challenger documents.
The first category of documents involved correspondence and notes of meetings between representatives of Challenger and representatives of Storm regarding the negotiation of the Storm product maintenance and development deed term sheet dated on or about 11 January 2007, court papers said.
The second category involves documents recording communications among representatives of Challenger, which refer to or comment on correspondence to or from Storm or meetings with representatives of Storm regarding the establishment and structure of the Challenger funds.
"For these reasons I consider Challenger was wholly successful in its objections in relation to the disputed categories 3A and 4A [Challenger documents] and the costs of the April 2012 rulings, including the hearing on 1 March 2012, should therefore follow that event," Reeves said in the court documents.
"Finally, Challenger and Macquarie have submitted that if an order for costs is made in relation to the April 2012 rulings, then the burden of that order should be shared equally between Macquarie and the class action parties.
"Since both Macquarie and the class action parties pursued almost identical submissions on the disputed categories issue, I consider it is appropriate that they should share this costs order equally."
As a result of the verdict, Challenger and Challenger Managed Investments have been removed as parties to the proceedings.
