Being bankrolled by a creditor that’s in the construction game might qualify as the riskiest indemnity going for an external administrator litigating during our current economic tumult.
When it comes to racking up insolvencies, building and construction muscles all other sectors aside in the race to the podium.
That though is of no concern to the judicial eminences sitting on the High Court of Australia.
They must maintain a state of pure indifference to the individual circumstances of those who come before them when they consider which applications contain merit sufficient for their arguments to be heard. And which do not.
For Sydney practitioner Anthony Warner, that indifference has left either him or his indemnifier with a legal bill that might be approaching $1 million after the High Court earlier this month refused Warner’s application for special leave to appeal in the case of Anthony John Warner in his Capacity as Trustee in Bankruptcy of the Estate of Brian McMillan v McMillan [2022] HCATrans 170 (14 October 2022).
As iNO has previously reported, Warner and/or his funder had racked up as much as $600,000 in legal bills when the Court of Appeal in March this year overturned an earlier judgment that found that the half share in Brian McMillan’s family home, which the bankrupt transferred to his wife for $1.00 in 2002, vested with Warner, who was appointed McMillan’s trustee in 2018.
Now the High Court has rejected Warner’s bid for special leave to overturn the Court of Appeal finding, an application advanced by the well regarded Justin Gleeson and opposed by the equally esteemed Brett Walker.
That refusal was accompanied by an order for costs and iNO’s sources have suggested that the bill Warner’s racked up chasing half of the McMillan’s Strathfield residence could be approaching $1 million.
For Warner’s sake you’d be hoping his indemnity, and we are assuming he has one because he’s never responded to iNO’s requests to confirm it, was provided in the form of cash or a bank guarantee.
Further you would hope that if not, his building industry backer has a balance sheet sufficient to absorb the shock this latest costs order will impose.
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