Advice from non-lawyers and “routed” through a legal practitioner at multidisciplinary partnership PricewaterhouseCoopers cannot be shielded under legal professional privilege, the Federal Court has found.
A judge has rejected the Australian Taxation Office’s claim that legal professional privilege does not apply to any communications between PricewaterhouseCoopers and its client, meat processor JBS, but has found that many of the reviewed documents do not satisfy the test of privilege.
A Federal Court judgment has laid out when a responsible entity of a managed investment scheme will be indemnified for its operating costs and when it can recoup legal costs in defending lawsuits brought over trust property.
Assessing claims of privilege involving multidisciplinary firms like PricewaterhouseCoopers that offer legal and accounting services is “inherently awkward”, a court heard on the final day of a hearing in a privilege battle between the accounting firm and the ATO.
A PwC partner who the ATO claims was assigned to work on a matter for meat processing company JBS to bring a “cloak of legal privilege” kept a supporting role on the brief despite the company CFO’s dissatisfaction, a court has heard.
A PwC partner who the ATO claims was assigned to work on a matter for meat processing company JBS to bring a “cloak of legal privilege” earned hundreds of dollars less per hour than his non-lawyer assistants, a court has heard.
Meat processing company and former PricewaterhouseCoopers client JBS has slammed as a “nightmare to the rule of law” a claim by the Commissioner of Taxation that the accounting giant’s internal protocols destroyed the company’s lawyer-client relationship.
Accounting giant PricewaterhouseCoopers used one of its legally qualified partners as a “postbox” to provide a “cloak of privilege” to work conducted for meat processing company JBS, the Commissioner of Taxation has told the Federal Court.