An academic wrote that a ‘statute is probably the most repellent form of written expression known to man’1. That was in 1958 when statutes were just starting their takeover of the common law world. Now, there’s hardly a corner of human life unregulated by big complex statutes. It is the rare person who does not prefer reading cases …
Breen v Clough [2024] NSWCA 316
Courts often caution against reliance on dictionaries to resolve meaning. B and C were neighbours on steep land above a river accessed by an inclinator5. An ‘easement for services’ over C’s land permitted services ‘to or from each lot benefited’6. B installed a ‘closed system’ CCTV camera on C’s land …
Salameh v R [2024] NSWCCA 239
S supplied what he said he believed was cocaine to a sex worker who was later hospitalised. The drug was fentanyl, a commercial quantity of which was found at his home. S was convicted of supplying ‘an amount of a prohibited drug which is not less than the commercial quantity applicable …’8 …
Australian Rail Track v ARTBIU [2024] FCAFC 170
Legislative history is often significant in working out the ‘purpose or object’ in order to apply s 15AA11.
After approval of an enterprise agreement, unions sought determination of various matters still in dispute. This depended on representatives having ‘not settled all of the matters that were in dispute during bargaining …
Ibrahim v Greater Bendigo CC [2025] VSC 6
E115 reported a case where ‘or’ took an ‘ambulatory and cumulative’ operation14. This case involved an application to extend time for starting work under a planning permit. The statute allowed review of (a) a decision to refuse an extension of time ‘or’ (b) a failure to extend time within a …
Statutory interpretation is not (and has never been) about finding an old maxim in a textbook to support an outcome you think may be correct or desirable. An approach of this kind inverts the process and subverts the outcome1. Finding out what parliament meant by the words it used involves the application of a rational method by which …
Martinus Rail v Qube (No 3) [2024] NSWSC 1483
An adjudicator awarded full costs where, on his reasoning, only 96.07% was allowable. The question was whether this involved jurisdictional error due to ‘legal unreasonableness’. This, noted Parker J (at [48]), was a question of statutory interpretation.
It was held the error was simply arithmetical, ‘not a contestable error of legal …
Gill v Liverpool City Council [2024] NSWLEC 133
Mortgagees of land compulsorily acquired objected to the compensation amount offered. The issue was whether the mortgagees could force joinder of the owner, who had not objected to the offer. The statute said that the court ‘may order that any other person [with an interest] be joined as a party’6.…
Elisha v Vision Australia [2024] HCA 50
The High Court rarely says very much about the basic principles applied in working out what a contract means. In this case (at [38]), the plurality stated –
The meaning of the terms of the … Contract … ‘is to be determined by what a reasonable person would have understood [the terms] to …
Cipla Australia v Novo Nordisk [2024] FCA 1414
E86 reported on Hill v Zuda Pty Ltd, where the High Court said that it expects lower courts to follow ‘seriously considered dicta’ of a majority of that court13. Much has been said about the outworking of this principle since it was reconfirmed in 202214.
Perram J …
