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Modern award coverage: what a high salary does not buy

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COURT AND TRIBUNAL

Basan v Watts McCray: proceeding transferred to the ACT

6 October 2016

A claim against four sets of professional advisers was commenced in the Supreme Court of Western Australia, although the events, the advisers and almost all of the witnesses were in the ACT. We acted for the second defendant and applied to transfer the proceeding under the cross-vesting legislation.

The Court transferred it: Basan v Watts McCray (A Firm) [2016] WASC 321. The judgment adopts the factors advanced in the second defendant’s written submissions, being that the remaining defendants’ places of business and our client’s registered office were in the ACT, that eleven potential witnesses lived there, that the events giving rise to the claim occurred there, that ACT law governed the claims, and that a trial in Perth would cost the ACT parties more to run.

The Court held that the ACT Supreme Court was the natural and appropriate forum and that the interests of justice favoured the transfer. A transfer decides where a case is heard and nothing about who wins it, and the proceeding continued in the ACT.

Read the judgment: AustLII

WHERE THIS SITS

Commercial litigation Corporate and commercial

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