Corporate & Commercial

Contracts, structures and governance for businesses that need the paperwork to hold when something goes wrong.

Mergers & Acquisitions

Buying or selling a business, from the term sheet and due diligence through to completion and the restraints that follow.

Read about it

Litigation & Dispute Resolution

Commercial disputes in the NSW, ACT and Federal courts, resolved early where that is possible and run properly where it is not.

Read about it

More of what we do

Property

Wills and Estates

Industries we act for

International Service

Government and Defence

Supplying government and the defence industry.

Read about it

Technology and Software

Your product scales digitally. Your contracts have to scale with it.

Read about it

Financial Services

A regulated business, on solid legal footing.

Read about it

Also live

Real Estate and Construction

Retail, Trade and Consumer Goods

Transport, Logistics and Shipping

Legal Administration Assistant, Canberra

Canberra office, full time, on site.

Read about it

Wahlstation for German Referendare

Sydney or Canberra, open all year.

Read about it

More about working here

Our people

The track record

What we write

The track record

Judgments and tribunal outcomes, transactions completed, appointments taken, and the conversations we are part of in Australia and in Germany.

Read about it

Latest, and longer form

Modern award coverage: what a high salary does not buy

Pathological arbitration clauses in Singapore

Auditor liability in Singapore and Australia

Guide: company constitutions

Guide: shareholder agreements

Germany

A German desk for businesses moving between Australia and the German-speaking market.

Read about it

Singapore

Singapore law where it governs the contract, and the arbitral seat that carries much of the region’s work.

Read about it

Vietnam

Market entry, supply arrangements and dispute resolution for Vietnam.

Read about it

Worth reading first

Vietnam arbitration

Defective arbitration clauses in Singapore

European privacy law for Australian business

Award coverage for German employers

COURT AND TRIBUNAL

Sharai Projects v Gupta: builder's claim dismissed for our clients

19 August 2026

A builder sued our clients for $28,200, said to be the final progress payment due under a Housing Industry Association fixed price contract for the construction of their house. Work had stopped before completion after the relationship with the builder’s director broke down, and our clients finished the project themselves.

Our case was that the fixed price contract was never intended to bind anyone. The only agreement with legal effect was an earlier services agreement, under which the builder was engaged to project manage the build and to provide its licence and insurances for $40,000, and it had already received more than that sum.

The Court agreed and dismissed the claim: Sharai Projects Pty Ltd v Gupta [2026] ACTMC 20. Both construction contracts were machinery documents executed in order to obtain bank finance, were not intended to create legal relations between the parties, and were a sham with no legal effect, so nothing was recoverable under them. In any event the builder had not met the contract’s own requirements for the final progress payment, and the house had not reached practical completion and could not be lived in.

A further $56,400 raised in closing submissions was refused, because it was not pleaded, was not run at the hearing and no amendment was sought. The second defendant, who had no contract with the builder at all, should not have been a party.

We had earlier obtained a freezing order in the Supreme Court over the builder’s assets, licences and receivables, since varied. Costs and the application of those orders remain to be dealt with.

Read the judgment: AustLII

WHERE THIS SITS

Building and construction Commercial litigation

Back to the track record