• Debtors often dispose of property to avoid paying creditors. Section 172 of the Property Law Act 1958 (Vic) provides creditors with a powerful weapon to defeat them. In Grapple Pay Pty Ltd v Conroy [2025] NSWCA 171 the New South Wales Court of Appeal added a gloss to the principles governing the New South Wales…

    Read more →

  • What is the extent to which a contract is under the “control of the court” after an order for specific performance is made in favour of a vendor of land, the purchaser fails to comply with that order and the vendor then seeks vacation of the order and leave of the court to obtain damages…

    Read more →

  • The Honourable Justice Croft, Robert Hay KC and Brett Harding of counsel will be the authors of the new edition of the leading text on mortgages in Australia, Fisher & Lightwood’s Law of Mortgage. The publisher is LexisNexis. The 3rd editor was published in 2014. The publication date has not yet been determined.

    Read more →

  • Where an owner of land is struggling to pay loans secured over the land it is not uncommon for the owner to enter into a lease with a related party in an attempt to avoid losing control of the land should the mortgagee enter possession and attempt to sell the land. The questions which arise…

    Read more →

  • In Gayed & Anor v Yuan [2024] VSCA 85 the Victorian Court of Appeal confirmed that: The purchasers bought land for $3,190,000 and paid a deposit of 10% of the purchase price, being $319,000. Three weeks before settlement the purchasers’ solicitor advised the vendor that the purchasers would be approximately $160,000 “short” of the balance needed to…

    Read more →

  • The Court of Appeal recently considered a claim that a right to apply for an order to have a decision of a public body set aside on public law grounds, in and of itself, could constitute an in personam right for the purposes of the Transfer of Land Act 1958’s indefeasibility provisions. In MAPA Pearls Pty Ltd v…

    Read more →

  • The Victorian Court of Appeal has confirmed that a ‘retail premises lease’ cannot cease to be such a lease during its term. In Verraty v Richmond Football Club [2020] VSCA 267 the Court of Appeal upheld Croft ‘s decision in Richmond Football Club v Verraty [2019] VSC 597. I will shortly publish another post about…

    Read more →

  • The latest edition of The Mortgagee’s Power of Sale has been published by LexisNexis.   Now in its fourth edition this book started life in 1980. The book is primarily written for practitioners and the text is arranged, as far as possible, in the same chronological order as the steps a mortgagee may take in selling mortgaged property under the…

    Read more →

  • The Supreme Court of Victoria has ruled that a lease that is a “retail premises lease” (within the meaning of s.11 of the Retail Leases Act 2003) when it is entered into cannot cease to be such a lease during its term. In Richmond Football Club v Verraty [2019] VSC 597. Croft J upheld an…

    Read more →

  • Today I posted an article about Verraty Pty Ltd v Richmond Football Club [2019] VCAT 1073. I have had queries about paragraph (i) where I said: “where the commencing rent under a new lease does not exceed $1,000,000 for the first 12 months,  before the lease is entered into the landlord should make an estimate…

    Read more →

Robert Hay KC Blog

Robert Hay KC Property and Commercial Law Barrister

Skip to content ↓