They might be experienced insolvency practitioners from the old country but Paul Cooper and Paul Appleton have slipped up down under by failing to present a creditors petition within the required time frame, a lapse that last week earned them an adverse costs order from Federal Court judge Berna Collier.
“The more likely situation appears to be that it was only one month after the delivery of judgment that the respondents realised that they, too, might require an extension of time.” Justice Berna Collier.
Cooper and Appleton commenced their journey to this ignominious outcome in early 2025 when they issued a bankruptcy to Walter Daniel Doyle, a director of the London-headquartered and listed NQ Minerals PLC (NQMPLC), whose mining operations were, prior to the appointment of administrators Cooper and Appleton in August 2021, spread across Tasmania and North Queensland.
Styling itself a green-at-heart precious and battery metals extractor, NQMPLC has the misfortune of buying the perpetually troubled Hellyer Gold Mine on Tasmania’s perpetually rained upon West Coast. Yes there’s gold there, but it’s contained in hard rock and it’s hard to make a quid.
Confidence, always evident where profitability has yet to make an appearance, blared from the company’s marketing fluff.
“Hellyer is NQ’s first flagship asset and will provide significant returns to shareholders over the coming
decades” it declared in 2020.
“Will provide”? Best of British bullshit, that.
The fact is that by August 2021 Cooper and Appleton were in charge of NQMPLC as voluntary administrators and after a fruitless year spent trying to offload the green gold mine they were appointed liquidators, after which they turned their attention to the directors, specifically Cloncurry-born Doyle, who these days appreciates the less-taxing climate of Monaco as a preferred residence.
The Begbies Trainor partners regarded the more than $2.5 million in Doyle’s director loan account as a sum he was obliged to repay. They also decided he wasn’t entitled to the more than $1 million he received in remuneration for services provided between January 2020 to May 2021.
Doyle predictably rejected their claims to any entitlement to the loan account sum or the remuneration, and raise the prospect of a cross-claim.
Nevertheless in November 2024 a UK Court delivered default judgment against Doyle in the amount of 2.543 million, plus interest of $589,000, plus costs, pre-judgment interest on costs and an unspecified additional amount sum of $141,257.00.
The next step was getting the UK judgment registered down under, which their lawyer Georgia Gamble managed in January 2025 and effectuating service on Doyle, which was achieved via substitution.
A bankruptcy notice was issued to Doyle in March but was following his appeal deemed not to have been served until June 3, which perhaps sets the meter running on the events which led ultimately to this month’s regrettable outcome, at least for Cooper and Appleton.
Unsurprisingly, Doyle challenged the bankruptcy notice, filing an application on June 23, 2025 for orders that the Notice be set aside and an injunction restraining Cooper and Appleton from presenting a creditor’s petition against him. He also sought an extension of time to comply. June 23 was two days before the Bankruptcy Notice’s expiry date.
Incredibly, while Justice Collier subsequently refused to grant Doyle his relief, as detailed in February this year in Doyle v Cooper as Liquidator of NQ Minerals PLC (in liq), in the matter of Doyle (No 2) [2026] FCA 117 the liquidators and their lawyers had seemingly overlooked the fact that the act of non-compliance with the bankruptcy notice upon which they relied occurred more than six months ago, meaning the notice was no longer a valid basis for the presenting of a creditor’s petition.
Exactly when that realisation dawned is not identified in her honour’s judgment, but it must’ve have been with some dread that Cooper and Appleton lawyers from Mills Oakley advised their clients that efforts to resist Doyle’s application for an extension of time might blow up in their face.
When you slip up, what’re you going to do? As explained in Doyle v Cooper as Liquidator of NQ Minerals PLC (in liq), in the matter of Doyle (No 3) [2026] FCA 472 Cooper and Appleton sought to persuade the judge to vary the orders she made after delivering her February judgment
“In the present case I consider it likely that, in opposing an extension of time being granted to Mr Doyle, the respondents simply forgot about the fact that they might also need an extension of time in the circumstances (as opposed to forgetting to raise that fact before the Court),” the judge said.
“In opposing Mr Doyle’s Application for Extension, the respondents did not raise, and the Court was unassisted by any submissions about the risk, to the respondents, that the time for presenting a creditor’s petition based upon non-compliance with the Bankruptcy Notice under s 44(1)(c) would expire prior to the delivery of judgment.
“It is difficult to characterise what transpired as an oversight in circumstances where, as I have already observed, there was extensive argument and written submissions about the issue of extension of time.
“The more likely situation appears to be that it was only one month after the delivery of judgment that the respondents realised that they, too, might require an extension of time.”
Her honour invariably ordered that Doyle’s costs be picked up by his pursuers, the amount of which may well be a dispute for another day.
BT are a very good firm of IPs. The circumstances of the case occur more often than people may think. The time limits in the area are strict. The timing should have been picked up by the local lawyers, particularly where there was an apparently slippery debtor.