Kolozsvari v Return to Work Corporation of South Australia [2026] SAET 30

• 1.2 The company's internally maintained general ledger detail report for the financial years ended 30 June 2018 to 2025.

• 1.3 The company's externally prepared Profit and Loss Statements and Balance Sheets for the financial years ended 30 June 2018 to 2025.

• 1.4 The company's externally maintained general ledger detail report for the financial years ended 30 June 2018 to 2025.

• 1.5 Copies of the company's Business Activity Statements and/or Installment Activity Statements and work papers for the period 5 December 2017 to present.

• 1.6 Copies of the Applicant's personal income tax returns for the financial years ended 30 June 2023 to 2025.

• 1.7 Copies of the company's internally maintained wage records for the Applicant for the period 1 July 2020 to present.

• 1.8 Copies of the source documents, which show payments made by the company to the Applicant e.g. company bank statements, showing remuneration paid by the company to the Applicant, electronic funds transfer advices, payslips etc for the period 1 July 2020 to present.

• 1.9 Copies of source documents, which show payments received by the Applicant from the company e.g. Applicant's bank statements, showing remuneration received from the company for the period 1 July 2020 to present.

• 1.10 Copies of the company's bank statements, which show superannuation paid by the company on behalf of the Applicant for the period 1 July 2020 to present.

• 1.11 Copies of the Applicant's superannuation account statements for the period 1 July 2020 to present, which show payment of superannuation by the company, on behalf of the Applicant.

• 1.12 In respect of the Applicant's superannuation entitlements from 1 January 2018 to present:-

(a) All documents, which show that the Applicant's remuneration, concerning her superannuation entitlements, may not have been paid to the Applicant.

(b) Any accounting entries or financial statements of the company, from 1 January 2018 to present, which show that the Applicant's remuneration, concerning any of her superannuation entitlements, is unpaid.

1. In addition to disclosure the respondent sought an order pursuant to rule 57(1)(c) SAET Rules 2024 that KKC3 Pty Ltd complied with rule 56, (in relation to disclosure and production of documents) as if the non-party was a party to the proceedings.
2. The respondent also sought an order pursuant to rule 57(1)(a) that the applicant and the non-party discover, in the approved form, whether they have or had in their possession, custody or power any of the documents which are the subject of the application for directions and identify those documents, in other words, file a list of documents.
3. The respondent also sought that the applicant and KKC3 Pty Ltd pay the respondent's costs of and incidental to the application.
4. In addition, in an e-mail of 11th February 2026 the respondent advised the applicant, and the newly engaged solicitors for the company, that they would be seeking an order that both the applicant and the company's lists of documents be verified on oath pursuant to Uniform Civil Rule 73.14 of the Uniform Civil Rules 2020.
5. The application for directions was the subject of orders made at a directions hearing on 19th December 2025 when the matter was listed for argument in the tribunal on 11 February. I am uncertain whether at that stage the respondent had served the application for directions on the company, but by that time there had been correspondence from the respondent to the applicant seeking discovery of the documents referred to in this application.
6. It will be noted from the above that most of the documents sought are company documents rather than the applicant's personal documents. The applicant was and, as far as I know remains, the sole shareholder and director of the company, and is the company secretary. As such, she is the appropriate person to give instructions and engage solicitors.
7. Throughout the proceedings the applicant's solicitors have been at pains to point out to the respondent's solicitors, including before me at telephone directions hearings, that they do not act for the company and have not provided advice to the applicant in her capacity as director, shareholder and company secretary. It is my experience in similar matters where the director and sole shareholder of a company also claims to be an employee and as such makes a claim for compensation against the company, the applicant readily provides documents to the respondent to substantiate the assertion of employment, including various financial and taxation records of the company as well as personal financial records. This is not the case here and I have not been told of any reason for this not to occur other than reference to the fact that they are separate legal entities.
8. By the time of the hearing the company had instructed Mr Parisi, who filed a notice of representative details on 5th February.
9. By the morning of the 11th of February, the parties had reached agreement about the substantive requests for disclosure apart from the request for the party and non-party to provide a list of documents and to attest to the list of documents under oath. The company's response to some of the requests was that there were no such documents in existence. In addition to providing a timetable for the provision for the disclosure of the documents as agreed, I made an order that the applicant in her position as company director and shareholder of KKC3 Pty Ltd provide an affidavit in respect of those responses to the disclosure request.
10. There was a category of documents, being some personal bank statements of the applicant, which had been overlooked in earlier disclosure processes. I was told that these bank statements related to a personal account in a different banking institution from her usual accounts. The applicant consented to orders for a timetable for disclosure of those bank statements.
11. I also made orders that the respondent pay an amount as reasonable compensation to KKC3 Pty Ltd for the time and expense taken to comply with the disclosure directed to the company.
12. I reserved my decision in respect of the other matters in dispute, as well as whether the applicant should verify a list of documents on oath as her solicitor was taking instructions on that issue. That was the subject of orders made on 6th March 2026.
13. This was not the first application for directions from the respondent seeking further and better disclosure. In an application for directions dated 22nd May 2025, the respondent sought disclosure of financial and taxation records of the applicant but also documents evidently created by the company KKC3 Pty Ltd. The applicant consented to disclose documents including personal income tax returns and bank statements but argued that she could not disclose, in her own right, company documents, as they belonged to the company. Following argument on the application I was persuaded that the applicant was technically correct and that any application in respect of disclosure of documents created, owned and in the possession of the company, should be directed to the company, irrespective of whether the person controlling the company and giving instructions to the company lawyers would be the applicant. Following that application for directions I had expected that there might be a similar application directed to the company. However, armed with the information to hand, the respondent sought a report from a forensic accountant Mr T. Koch who provided a report to the respondent dated 30th October 2025. In response to a specific question to identify further documents which he required to answer the questions put to him, he set out a list. It was his list of documents which formed the basis for the respondent's application of 3rd December 2025. As pointed out by the Applicant, some of these documents were part of the May 2023 application, directed to the applicant.
14. It is against this background that I considered the respondent's application for formal disclosure by the non-party, disclosure on oath and costs of the application.
15. The authorities concerning rule 73.15 of the Uniform Civil Rules 2020 were canvassed in my decision of Quinn v District Council of Cleve (No. 1) [2023] SAET 74. In that matter the applicant sought an order that further and better disclosure from the respondent be made on oath. The respondent opposed such an order on the basis that it was a prerequisite to the exercise of the rule that there needed to be reason to doubt whether a person has fully complied with an obligation to disclose documents.
16. In De Poi and others (No. 2)[2] his Honour Justice White was satisfied that the plaintiffs had established:

Some grounds for doubting, that at least in some respects, the defendants have fully discharged their obligations with respect to disclosure[3]

His Honour ordered that the list of documents be verified by affidavit as:

...one way to require the defendants to give further attention to the matter[4]

1. On the other hand, in Oolijnyk v Oolijnyk[5] the court found that even in circumstances where a party had made four attempts at making full disclosure, there was not a proper basis for an order that disclosure be verified on oath. Master Lunn stated that it was common for parties in that type of action to file several lists of documents as further documents became directly relevant, due to amendments in pleadings. That was not the circumstance in Quinn. I ordered a list of documents to be deposed to on oath in Quinn because a number of lists had been filed in a within a very short period by the respondent and large numbers of documents had been added to the most recent list - they were not recently acquired documents. I was also concerned at the lack of disclosure of documents of a species which might be expected in that litigation.
2. In the present case I determined that this was not a matter where KKC3 Pty Ltd who is not a party to the matter should be required to file a list of documents on oath even though the power to do so exists in Rule 57. The solicitors for the company acted efficiently upon being engaged and obtaining instructions to respond to the respondent's demand so that orders could be made by consent, curtailing the extent of the hearing required. I take into account that earlier requests for company documents from the respondent were directed to the applicant in her personal capacity not in her capacity as a director of the company. Following my determination of the May 25 application for directions, an application for non-party disclosure seemed inevitable. Christmas and New Year occurred between the setting of the date of the hearing of the most recent application for directions and the hearing itself. Given the orders by consent, including that the applicant as a director of the company file an affidavit as to documents she says no longer exist, I do not consider there are grounds to require a list of documents from KKC3 Pty Ltd or that it be verified on oath.
3. In respect of costs, the respondent declares that the delays of the applicant in complying with her obligation to disclose relevant documents have continued from the time the claim was made, let alone referred for hearing and determination, and certainly since a list of documents was filed by the applicant on 13 November 2024.
4. Section 106 governs the question of costs under the Return to Work Act. The applicant is entitled to costs unless the tribunal finds that it acted unreasonably in bringing the proceedings or in relation to any other aspect of the conduct of the proceedings or it has acted frivolously or vexatiously in bringing or in relation to the conduct of the proceedings. In those circumstances that tribunal may decline to make an order award of costs in favour of the applicant or award costs against the party or reduce the amount of costs to which the party would have been otherwise entitled. The respondent in effect asks for the most extreme of these penalties.
5. In respect of the company, I have already made an order for the reasonable costs of complying with the orders for the provision of documents. The company is not a party to the matter, and I consider that it has acted reasonably and efficiently once it was properly served with the application and/or apprised of the requests, and received legal advice. I do not see basis under section 106, for an entity which is not a party to the action, to claim costs otherwise than for the reasons I have ordered.
6. In respect of the applicant the situation is different. The question is whether, at least in respect of this application for directions, the applicant has acted unreasonably in her personal capacity as applicant in not providing complete disclosure of the documents in her possession or power before the respondent took out the application. In my view the applicant's behaviour does not reach the standard of unreasonableness. It will be seen that the additional documents from the applicant are somewhat restricted and really the bulk of the material comes from the company. Whilst the respondent maintains that the applicant and the company are one in the same, the fact is they are two separate legal entities. I am not aware of an earlier request for these documents being directed to the applicant as company secretary although she would have been aware from the proceedings that the respondent was looking for these documents. I think it is reasonable for the applicant to seek legal advice in her capacity as company director and secretary before providing the documents. Failure to provide bank statements from another personal account until this application seems, on the evidence before me, to be a matter of inadvertence, given the prior production of bank statements and the applicant's consent to the orders made on 13th February 2026. In any event, some of the costs of the applications, as directed to the non-party company, were inevitable after my ruling in July 2025.
7. For the above reasons the respondent's request for costs against the applicant and KKC3 Pty Ltd is denied.

[1] There is a linked action ET-24-2590 involving the same parties being a dispute about the extent of lump sum entitlements for an earlier injury with a different employer.

[2] [2010] SASC 333.

[5] [2011] SASC 166.