OPINION by Tim O’Dwyer M.A., LL.B Solicitor Consumer Advocate watchdog@argonautlegal.com.au On 27th May Peter and Helen Kettle contracted to sell both units of their Surfers Paradise duplex (for $1.2 million and $800,000 respectively) to Milani Properties Pty. Ltd. Deposits totalling $170,000 were paid to Milani’s solicitor’s trust account. Settlement of each contract was due on 13th July, subject to finance approval by the “Finance Date” of 17th June. The finance clause in both contracts...
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Barry Suckling, founder of National Builders Group, is facing a Supreme Court fight over allegations that assets were inappropriately transferred or sold off before the company’s collapse early last year. The legal dispute centres on the control of intellectual property formerly owned by NBG, including trademarks and designs and plans of 200 homes the company licenses and sells to home buyers and builders. The Melbourne-based firm was voluntarily wound up in March 2012 with debts...
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A LAWYER was sent Legal Aid Queensland clients while working for more than two years without a practising certificate. Peter Arthur Rowell had claimed he was registered interstate, and was only caught out after a complaint about his work. In a newly published decision, the Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal found Rowell had engaged in professional misconduct and struck him off. “Mr Rowell has ignored the most basic of professional obligations and knowingly misrepresented to...
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OPINION by Tim O’Dwyer M.A., LL.B Solicitor Consumer Advocate watchdog@argonautlegal.com.au When the purchaser of an up-market home unexpectedly says settlement won’t take place, does the vendor still have to move out before terminating and claiming damages? Donna Kelly-Corbett was pleased when she sold her home at auction for $1.2 million. Although she already had a finance-approved contract to purchase her next home, her purchase contract was not conditional on the prior sale. Because both contracts were due...
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It was written there for all to see in the company’s prospectus. But for the 3500-odd investors in failed Gippsland Secured Investments, the company’s financial woes came as a surprise. For the mostly farmers, pensioners and small business owners who held money with the non-bank lender, GSI was a trusted institution with a vested interest in keeping the community secure. But for those with the financial nous to understand the fine print, it had been...
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One of Australia’s leading developers has lost a bitter war with investors after it attempted to alter the floor plan of their luxury apartment complex to house a religious movement founded and managed by its own chief executive. Crown Group sold a vision of six-star living at its future $80 million Viking development in Sydney’s Green Square, using artists’ images depicting a Ferrari showroom occupying the ground-floor space. With the pledge from Crown that both...
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Penthouse buying is an urban sport guaranteed to appeal to the competitive and successful – the position at the top of any new tower or apartment block tells the world, and those below, that you have won. Peaked. You’re top of the pile, with the best views and the biggest apartment. Melbourne’s apartment-building boom of the past decade has produced penthouses of palatial proportions, with views that take in the bay and city, and mountain...
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FALLING house prices, according to a Courier Mail report by News Limited National Social Editor Natasha Bita, have driven one in 40 households to the point where more money is owed to the bank than a home is worth. We at Mitchells are painfully aware of this disturbing phenomenon which is part of what has been described as “mortgage stress”. Seeing solicitors such as ourselves may be the first step in getting (or keeping) out...
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When Queensland lawyer Tim O’Dwyer read at home the first report below in The Courier Mail about neighbours annoyed by a Gold Coast property owner’s “solar farm”, he wondered how long it would take for there to be television interest in this novel neighbourhood dispute. Tim has participated over the years in more than a few TV current affairs stories about neighbours upset over fences, trees, rubbish piles, dogs, parked cars and even surveilance cameras....
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Academic lawyer, Ken Mackie, has in a law journal article explained how “it is a well-established principle that if a person is criminally responsible for the death of another, and that death is a material fact in the vesting of property in favour of that person, then the interest in that property is forfeited.” Mackie writes that this “forfeiture rule”, as it is commonly known, is based upon public policy. He cites an English case...
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