Commentary and case law from the Commercial Bar Association's finest.
Dr Kylie Weston-Scheuber and Matthew Harvey examine a recent Court of Appeal decision concerning the requirements for an easement by presumption of lost modern grant. The Court made some interesting observations about the interaction between the doctrine and the Transfer of Land Act, which may be of relevance to future matters where easements are claimed.
The recent decision of the NSW Court of Appeal in Seymour Whyte v Ostwald confirms that the position in NSW conflicts with the Victorian position on the question of whether the security of payments regime applies to companies in liquidation.
The High Court has handed down its decisions in the second and third cases concerning Security of Payments legislation to come before it. In Probuild v Shade Systems and Maxcon v Vadasz, the High Court affirmed that in New South Wales and South Australia, review is available for jurisdictional error but not for error of law on the face of the record.
A recent decision by Vickery J addresses the practice of “piggybacking” by a plaintiff in the proportionate liability context. The decision means that a plaintiff bringing a claim against a concurrent wrongdoer joined by the defendant must properly plead a cause of action against them; it may be insufficient simply to make reference to the first defendant’s pleading.
The New South Wales Court of Appeal has determined that an adjudicator’s decision under the Building and Construction Industry Security of Payment Act 1999 (NSW) is not amenable to judicial review for error of law on the face of the record, thus reversing the decision at first instance.
The recent High Court decision in Sidhu v Van Dyke [2014] HCA 19 (16 May 2014) has clarified some key issues in relation to the law of equitable estoppel, specifically in relation to reliance and remedy.
In Vasudevan & Ors v Becon Const & Anor [2014] VSCA 14, the Victorian Court of Appeal adopted a broader interpretation of the phrase ‘for the benefit of … a director’ in s 588FDA of the Corporations Act 2001 (the Act) than has been accepted in previous cases. The decision has the potential to widen the ambit of the unreasonable director-related transactions provisions of the Act.