Two recent decisions of the Full Court of the Federal Court of Australia, Wilmink v Westpac Banking Corporation and Atkinson v Commissioner of Taxation, should serve as a warning to self-represented litigants not to pursue hopeless and nonsensical claims.  In each case, the Full Federal Court said that the limited resources of the Court should not have been spent dealing with the claims and that the proceedings would be referred to the Registrar to consider whether to apply for a vexatious proceedings order. Read about the cases here.

An important exception to the indefeasibility of title of registered proprietors of land under Torrens legislation is fraud.  The High Court in Cassegrain v Gerard Cassegrain & Co Pty Ltd  recently clarified the ambit of the “fraud” exceptions to the principle of indefeasibility of title found in ss 42(1) and 118(1)(d) of the Real Property Act 1900 (NSW).  Read about the case here.

Proper preparation and presentation of a case before a superior court is not an easy task, even for a very experienced legal practitioner.  Not surprisingly then, a self-represented litigant or non-practitioner representative is likely to struggle when conducting such proceedings and may create problems for both the court and the opposing represented litigant.  A recent example of the kinds of problems that can be created can be seen in the New South Wales Court of Appeal decision in ACES Sogutlu Holdings Pty Ltd (in liq) v Commonwealth Bank of Australia.  I have written a paper about the case and a follow up judgment by the Court of Appeal.  Read the paper here,

Authority now favours a less strict view of the scope of the Graywinter principle.  A recent example of this can be seen in Pravenkav Group Pty Ltd v Diploma Construction (WA) Pty Ltd [No 3] where a company challenged a statutory demand on the basis that it had an offsetting claim. A question arose as to whether, in order to comply with s 459G of the  Corporations Act 2001 (Cth) under the Graywinter principle, the affidavit supporting the application to set aside the statutory demand was required to contain evidence sufficient to permit the court to quantify the amount of the offsetting claim. The Court of Appeal of Western Australia held that this was not required.  I have written a paper about the case.  Read the paper here.