Draft witness statements prepared by a solicitor for the benefit of a client are the property of the client, even if incomplete and never provided to the client, and therefore constitute 'books of' the company for the purposes of s 247A of the Corporations Act 2001 (Cth). Legal professional privilege is not an absolute bar to inspection under s 247A but is a discretionary consideration. The characterisation of a slip rule application as an 'afterthought' is relevant only to the exercise of discretion, not to whether the application falls within the scope of the rule.
The full text is available to signed-in members, including the 8 later cases that cite this judgment.