The Court refused both parties' applications for legal costs of the proceedings, holding that neither the plaintiffs' 'almost certain to succeed' argument nor the 'so unreasonable' conduct threshold from Lai Qin was met where the defendant voluntarily produced documents after a change of management. However, the Court ordered the plaintiffs to pay $12,500 as a gross sum for the first defendant's costs of compliance with the informal production, but directed that this amount would be recoverable by the plaintiffs as an expense in any future substantive proceedings against the first defendant. The Court confirmed there is no presumptive rule as to costs in preliminary discovery applications under UCPR r 5.8, and that redacted invoices providing insufficient narrative detail were inadequate to support the full quantum of compliance costs claimed.
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