No duty of care to subsequent home owners. Consultants in the clear?

Ku-ring-gai Council v Chan [2017] NSWCA 226 What you need to know The New South Wales Court of Appeal has delivered a decision that creates significant difficulties for subsequent purchasers of domestic properties who seek recovery from building consultants for defective works when recourse against the builder under statutory home warranty schemes is available. This […]

Discretionary timing of bank’s ‘target hardening’ technology deemed sound in Court of Appeal decision

Banks and other institutions invest significant amounts of time and capital in building systems, processes and procedures to plan for untoward criminal activity to ensure their staff, customers and the public are safe. Wotton Kearney has recently represented Westpac in a matter in the ACT Court of Appeal Roberts v Westpac Corporation [2016] ACTA 68. […]

Class Actions Update – Another Setback for MCI

On Monday, 12 December 2016, his Honour Justice Sifris of the Supreme Court of Victoria handed down judgment in the matter of Melbourne City Investments Pty Ltd v Myer Holdings Limited [2016] VSC 655. Click below to read a brief alert prepared by Cain Jackson and Edward O’Brien summarising the judgment and the implications for […]

Australia adopts market-based causation (aka fraud on the market) for the first time

The elephant in the room in all shareholder class actions was whether shareholders had to establish their own reliance on the contravening conduct, or could merely rely on that conduct’s effect on the market, akin to the US concept of “fraud on the market”. The NSW Supreme Court has taken a step closer towards Australia […]

Chubb Insurance v Robinson: how to interpret a professional services exclusion

The Victorian Full Federal Court has recently clarified the operation of a professional services exclusion within a D&O policy in Chubb Insurance Company of Australia Limited v Robinson [2016] FC AFC 17. This case demonstrates that a professional services exclusion cannot be expected to exclude all risks that ordinarily fall for cover under a professional […]

Section 54: It is all in the Act

Two recent decisions of the Western Australia Court of Appeal (Allianz Australia Insurance Ltd v Inglis [2016] WASCA 25) and the NSW Federal Court (Pantaenius Australia Pty Ltd v Watkins Syndicate 0457 at Lloyds [2016] FCA 1) show that section 54 of the Insurance Contracts Act 1984 is still causing trouble over 30 years after […]

High Court confirms third party claimants can join insurers to proceedings

Yesterday the High Court handed down its decision in CGU Insurance v Blakeley [2016] HCA 2, a case which considers a third party claimant’s right to join an insurer to Court proceedings against an insured for the purpose of challenging the insurer’s decision to decline cover to the insured. After reviewing conflicting authorities on the […]

Finding your forum

In their article published in the August edition of Insurance Business magazine, Heidi Nash-Smith and Jack Geng provide a useful comparison of the way claims against financial service providers are dealt with by the Financial Ombudsman Service and the Federal Court.