Law:

Section:

(a) Equity--- ----Legal professional privilege---Scope---Equity would restrain an apprehended breach of confidential information and would do so with respect to documents which were the subject of legal professional privilege and which were confidential---Equity would restrain third parties if their conscience was relevantly affected. Lord Ashburton v Pape [1913] 2 Ch 469 and Johns v Australian Securities Commission (1993) 178 CLR 408; [1993] HCA 56 ref. (b) Legal professional privilege, doctrine of--- ----Scope---Documents subject to legal professional privilege---Whether legal professional privilege operated only as an immunity or was also an actionable legal right - Documents in question were created by a law firm, for the sole or dominant purpose of providing plaintiff-company with legal advice about a corporate restructure---Said documents were stolen from the electronic file management system of law firm and disseminated---Defendant-tax authority also obtained copies of the said documents---Plaintiff argued that the documents were subject to legal professional privilege and asked the defendant to return them and provide an undertaking they would not be referred to or relied upon---Defendant refused to return the documents or provide such an undertaking---Plaintiff therefore sought an injunction restraining the taxation authorities from making any use of documents, and an order for the delivery up of the documents---Held, that legal professional privilege was not a legal right which was capable of being enforced, or used as a cause of action---Said privilege was only an immunity from the exercise of powers which would otherwise compel the disclosure of privileged communications---Legal professional privilege operated as a means of (defensively) resisting the compulsory production of information, but did not provide a positive right entitling the holder of the privilege to a remedy, such as an injunction restraining the use of legally privileged material---Where documents were withheld from disclosure no question of restraining persons from accessing them could arise---If they had come into the possession of another person in circumstances which raised an…

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