Litigation

Court ousts liquidators for abuse of process

Dye & Co’s Hamish MacKinnon. Dye & Co’s Nicholas Giasoumi. Issuing demands for payment of claims unproven at the time the demands are issued might well be a common practice but Federal Court judge David O’Callaghan has placed it on the endangered list. In his decision in Gadsden v MacKinnon (Liquidator), in the matter of Allibi Pty Ltd (in liq) [2023] FCA 647 Justice O’Callaghan…


More delay for Probuild creditors

Deloitte partner Matthew Donnelly. Barely a week after warning Probuild creditors that legal proceedings will delay payment of any dividend, the four appointees of the DoCAlypse have again ridden forth bearing tidings of woe. “I tentatively suggest a return of not more than 10c in the dollar might be paid before the end of 2025. I emphasise this is a crude estimate only and the…


Without irony lawyer seeks straight answer

BDO partner Shaun McKinnon. Thomson Geer partner Scott Guthrie. Getting a straight answer about DoCA funding can be tougher than shelling an uncooked prawn, as lawyer Scott Guthrie can attest. When the Thomson Geer partner appeared at the second meeting of creditors of stalled aquaculture play Project Sea Dragon Pty Ltd (PSDPL) Guthrie had one overriding concern – if the company was returned to the…


Landlord wins in fight with deed administrator

Hamilton Murphy’s Stephen Dixon. Who’d be a landlord? That’s the question that came to mind as iNO read about Centuria Property Funds No 2 Limited (CCPF) in its battle with a tenant who didn’t pay which then became a battle with the insolvency practitioner appointed the day after the tenant failed to comply with a court ordered deadline for payment to CCPF of $1,037,289.31c. “Regardless…


Probuild DoCA amendment bid as creditor cries foul

Deloitte Partner David Orr. The four Deloitte partners charged with shepherding the Probuild Group Deed of Company Arrangement (DoCA) to effectuation had some unpleasant news for creditors last week. In a circular dated June 1, lead deed administrator David Orr advised that one creditor – Destination Brisbane Consortium (DBC) – had filed an application in the Supreme Court of Queensland on March 31 seeking to…


Receivers in the firing line over sale delay

BPS Resolved’s Dave Sampson. Mackay Goodwin’s David Hurst. Dave Sampson and David Hurst have copped a spray in a judgement as a frustrated lender seeks discovery from the pair in their capacities as receivers of development property at Castle Hill owned by Cecil Developments Pty Ltd (Cecil). In Globe Capital Administration Pty Ltd v Cecil Developments Pty Ltd atf the Cecil Developments Unit Trust (Receivers…


WA way on full display in GT Capital DoCA drama

PwC’s Simon Theobald PwC’s Robert Ditrich. You might have thought that when Perth-based litigation funder GT Capital Partners imploded last year with its founders exchanging aspersions at 10 paces, whoever was appointed to clean up the mess would have their work cut out for them. Well as it turns out, a DoCA’s been effectuated, new directors have taken over and the Supreme Court of West…


So you want to sell an insolvency practice?

CRS Warner principal Anthony Warner Steve Kugel of The Insolvency Experts. The seemingly endless wrangling over money owing by one insolvency practice partner to his former practice partner might actually be reaching a conclusion eight years after the pair split, with a NSW Supreme Court judge yesterday ruling on the final issues in dispute. “The defendants ask me to accept that, faced with the need…


Curacao-style winding up at an end after 27 years

Insolvency marked another milestone last week when former Ferrier Hodgson partner Gary Trevor completed the torturous winding up of Bell Group NV (BGNV) almost three decades after being appointed liquidator by Australian courts of an administration ancillary to its parent insolvency in the Caribbean jurisdiction of what was then the Netherlands Antilles. In the Supreme Court of West Australia the Perth insolvency veteran obtained orders…


Court ponders abuse of process as administrators act

McGrathNicol partner Keith Crawford. McGrathNicol partner Matthew Caddy. Proceedings in the Federal Court yesterday aptly demonstrated the dangers insolvency practitioners face when accepting appointments as administrators in the middle of intractable shareholder disputes. At a hearing before Federal Court judge Tim McEvoy in Melbourne, counsel for the administrators of Agrifunder Holdings Pty Ltd appeared seeking approval for Agrifunder to enter into a deed of refinance…