Professor’s art collection in liquidators’ sights

One would expect the recipient of an Order of Australia, a glass ceiling shatterer, a prominent tertiary administrator and professional director no less, to have access to top shelf legal advice.

This after all is a person who for decades wielded significant influence as a university vice chancellor, emeritus professor and company director, accumulating along the way the accolades typically bequeathed to senior public service functionaries adept at making their mark.

So imagine iNO’s surprise when it emerged on Monday morning in the NSW Supreme Court that said dignitary was in breach of a court order.

Fixing Eight Selborne’s Alexander Langshaw with a glacial stare Justice Ashley Black curtly informed him that if defendant and University Co-Operative Bookshop Limited director Dianne Yerbury continued to refuse to file a defence then his honour was happy to facilitate a hearing on any application for summary judgment the plaintiffs in the matter might care to bring.

iNO does not know if Langshaw’s instructors regularly advise clients to breach court orders but in this case the excuse that the defendants – Yerbury and a trustee company associated with her – had just filed an application to have the plaintiff liquidators’ claims struck out cut no ice.

There judge made orders to bring on hearing of the strikeout application on August 8, including in the orders a note that “the Defendants are in breach of the orders made on 28 April 2025 for filing of their Defence, and direct the Defendants to file and serve all evidence by 23 July 2025 directed to why there should not be summary judgment against them”.

The plaintiffs – PwC trio Phil Carter, Daniel Walley and Andrew Scott – are keeping their cards close to their chest as the deadline for their evidence and the like approaches. But their counsel Daniel Krochmalik said enough.

The court heard that the reason the liquidators seek a seemingly leisurely timetable for their application for orders freezing Yerbury’s assets is that they don’t think it would be easy to liquidate her extensive art collection quickly.

The possibility of bankruptcy was also canvassed with the liquidators viewing the cache of art as the only realistic source of assets given they’d learned during public examinations that the bulk of the non-art assets had been “dissipated” into the trustee company. Perhaps that was as a result legal advice too?