Pub­li­ca­tions

May 27, 2025

Might a Receiv­er of a dis­tressed devel­op­ment project owe a duty of care to sub­se­quent own­ers of the lots when completed?

Upon tak­ing pos­ses­sion and con­trol of an incom­plete dis­tressed devel­op­ment asset, a secured financier will more often than not look to com­plete the project works itself in order to max­imise its recovery.This may neces­si­tate the financier assum­ing respon­si­bil­i­ty for the build­ing con­tract in order to com­plete the project works or engag­ing a replace­ment…

May 23, 2025

No will, no direc­tion: The estate of Liam Payne and under­stand­ing law of intestacy

When Liam Payne sang ​“nobody can drag me down” we did­n’t think he was talk­ing about his aver­sion to sit­ting down and draft­ing his estate plan­ning doc­u­ments. How­ev­er, after leav­ing no valid will on his death, the dis­tri­b­u­tion of the for­mer One Direc­tion star’s for­tune is up to the rules…

May 19, 2025

Beware Retail Lease Dis­close Statements

Before a retail lease is entered into, the Retail Leas­es Act 1994 (NSW) (the RL Act) requires a land­lord to give a signed Lessor’s Dis­clo­sure State­ment (Dis­clo­sure State­ment) to the ten­ant. The Dis­clo­sure State­ment con­tains impor­tant infor­ma­tion about the premis­es and the com­mer­cial terms of the lease — such as the per­mit­ted use, the…

May 19, 2025

Devel­op­ers beware the statu­to­ry ​‘non del­e­gable’ duty of care under the Design and Build­ing Prac­ti­tion­ers Act 2020

The Design and Build­ing Prac­ti­tion­ers Act 2020 (DBP Act) came into effect in NSW in June 2020. Since its intro­duc­tion the courts have pro­vid­ed guid­ance on the inter­pre­ta­tion and reach of this Act. This arti­cle looks at the recent High Court deci­sion of Paf­burn Pty Ltd v The Own­ers – Stra­ta Plan No…

May 7, 2025

Which edi­tion of Build­ing Code of Aus­tralia applies to devel­op­ments in NSW?

The Build­ing Code of Aus­tralia (BCA) is part of the the Nation­al Con­struc­tion Code (NCC). The NCC is updat­ed every 3 years, based on required reg­u­la­to­ry prac­tices, indus­try research, pub­lic feed­back and pol­i­cy direc­tions from gov­ern­ments between pub­lish­ing cycles.Con­struc­tion projects often span 2 ver­sions of the BCA.There has his­tor­i­cal­ly been much debate in the New…

May 5, 2025

Meta’s AI law­suit in the USA & what it could mean for the future of AI & copyright

Recent­ly, Meta appeared in a US fed­er­al court to defend one of the most close­ly watched copy­right chal­lenges of the AI era. The law­suit is being brought by a group of promi­nent US authors includ­ing Ta-Nehisi Coates and Richard Kadrey. The plain­tiffs allege that Meta unlaw­ful­ly used mil­lions of copy­right­ed books, down­loaded…

May 1, 2025

Match­ing Par­ent­ing Orders to Risk: Craft­ing orders to prop­er­ly address the dan­gers in a fam­i­ly law matter

The focus of any par­ent­ing mat­ter being dealt with in the Fed­er­al Cir­cuit and Fam­i­ly Court of Aus­tralia is what orders are in the best inter­ests of the child. To deter­mine what is in the best inter­ests of the child, the Court must con­sid­er all of the evi­dence pre­sent­ed in…

Apr 30, 2025

Amend­ments to NCC 2022 com­menc­ing on 1 May 2025

Back­groundThe Aus­tralian Build­ing Codes Board (ABCB), a joint ini­tia­tive of the Com­mon­wealth and state and ter­ri­to­ry gov­ern­ments togeth­er with the build­ing and plumb­ing indus­tries, is respon­si­ble for the Nation­al Con­struc­tion Code, Water­Mark and Code­Mark Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion Schemes, and reg­u­la­to­ry reform in the con­struc­tion industry. One of the ABCB’s pri­ma­ry roles is to update and main­tain…

Apr 29, 2025

Choose Your Own Respon­dent in Gen­er­al Pro­tec­tions Dis­missal Disputes

Usu­al­ly when one par­ty is tak­ing legal pro­ceed­ings against anoth­er the respon­dent enti­ty needs to be care­ful­ly iden­ti­fied. It can be fatal to the pro­ceed­ings if the wrong enti­ty is sued. This stands to rea­son giv­en the adverse con­se­quences that can flow from lit­i­ga­tion. There is usu­al­ly a process by which…

Apr 9, 2025

Res­i­den­tial Ten­an­cies Act 2010 (NSW) reforms and oblig­a­tions of land­lords — effec­tive from 19 May 2025

Intro­duc­tionThe Res­i­den­tial Ten­an­cies Act 2010 (NSW) (the Act) and the Res­i­den­tial Ten­an­cies Reg­u­la­tion 2019 (NSW) (the Reg­u­la­tions) have under­gone some sig­nif­i­cant changes fol­low­ing a pro­longed and exten­sive con­sul­ta­tion peri­od with prop­er­ty man­age­ment stake­hold­ers. These changes have gen­er­at­ed a lot of buzz as they seek to improve the rights of ten­ants in NSW and…