Great Southern investors granted crucial access Associate...

Great Southern investors granted crucial access
Associate justice orders document access

By Kate Kachor
Wed 27 Apr 2011
A Supreme Court associate judge has allowed a Great Southern class action access to previously blocked documentation.




The final activities of former Great Southern directors could soon come to light after a Supreme Court associate justice granted the legal team behind an agribusiness class action access to "crucial evidence".

In a letter to investors of its Great Southern class action, Melbourne-based legal firm Macpherson + Kelley (M+K)said an Associate Justice's decision to dismiss objections by Great Southern founder and director, John Young, and allow access to the documents is a great result for investors.

"This information is important in relation to the current group proceeding and the documents are likely to become crucial evidence at trial as it will go to whether Great Southern was misleading you, the investor, as to projected yields and Great Southern's ability to manage schemes so that investors received a decent return at harvest," the letter said.

"[It is also important in relation to] Great Southern's repeated statements regarding its financial strength and capability to manage all of the schemes under its management to completion."

In January this year, M+K issued two subpoenas on former Great Southern directors Peter Patrikeos and Jeffrey Mews, the letter said.

The subpoenas required Patrikeos and Mews to produce documents, including internal Great Southern communications dealing with the poor yields from early tree projects and the events that led to the eventual "topping up" of the returns to investors in these earlier schemes, it said.

"One of the directors, John Young, the founder of Great Southern and former Managing Director of Great Southern, raised a number of objections, trying to prevent us from inspecting the documents produced by Mr Patrikeos and Mr Mews," the letter said.

"His legal representatives went so far as having the objections heard before an Associate Justice."

On 4 April, the Associate Justice dismissed Young's objections and has ordered a regime be agreed between parties that will allow M+K to inspect the documents.

"M+K are now in the process of liaising with the legal representatives of the liquidators and insurers of the relevant Great Southern companies in order to confirm that what we inspect is not subject to any form of 'privilege'," the letter said.

M+K expect the regime to be in place by 9 May 2011, with the legal team inspecting documents shortly after.