Underlying dispute over aircraft stranded in Russia may top US$100m
The High Court of New Zealand has declined to expand discovery in a lessor's dispute with its aircraft insurer and broker over unrecoverable Russian-based jets.
The ruling came in Airwork Holdings Ltd v QBE Insurance (Australia) Ltd [2026] NZHC 2712, released 7 September 2026 by the High Court's Auckland registry.
Airwork Holdings Limited, AFO Aircraft (NZ) Limited, and Airwork Ireland Limited, all now in receivership, sued QBE Insurance (Australia) Limited (QBE) and broker Aon New Zealand (Aon) for breach of contract. The claim centred on six aircraft leased to a Russian airline that became largely unrecoverable after Russia invaded Ukraine in early 2022, and could exceed US$100 million. Airwork alleged QBE wrongly refused to cover the aircraft. If that refusal was valid, Airwork said Aon negligently failed to arrange comprehensive cover.
The judgment addressed applications by Airwork and Aon to widen the categories of tailored discovery that QBE must provide. Airwork wanted documents from 1 June 2017 showing QBE's knowledge of Russian risk and its willingness to cover Russian-based aircraft. Aon sought documents from 1 November 2017 showing how QBE understood the policy's key clauses and why it declined Airwork's claim. The parties later agreed a common start date of 1 November 2017.
Under r 8.8 of the High Court Rules 2016, tailored discovery is ordered when the interests of justice call for more or less disclosure than the standard rules give. The court said that relevance, not proportionality, was the primary basis for sorting documents into categories. Proportionality mainly governed how discovery was carried out, not what fell within its scope. It found that the documents sought were plainly relevant to QBE's alleged provision of cover for Russian-based aircraft.
QBE did not dispute that the documents were discoverable in principle. It argued that naming them as separate categories was unnecessary, since the material overlapped with categories the parties had already settled, including a part-category on QBE's preparedness to cover Russian-based aircraft, added after the hearing. The court accepted that those categories appeared to directly capture what Airwork and Aon were separately seeking, and declined both applications, leaving it to the parties to work out how to locate responsive documents within that framework.
On costs, the court's preliminary view was that each side should bear its own costs on the applications, since the ruling was largely clarificatory of an agreement the parties had already reached. If either side objected, costs were reserved for short memoranda, due from QBE within 10 working days of the judgment.
