News: New appeals on liquidation and deportation

The two new special leave applications granted last Friday were from the following decisions:

  • Fortress Credit Corporation (Australia) II Pty Ltd v Fletcher [2014] NSWCA 148, like another NSW matter that was granted leave in August, concerns the bankruptcy of the Octaviar investment group and a court’s power to extend the time limit for a liquidator to apply to void some of a company’s pre-bankruptcy dealings. In this case, a five-judge bench of the NSW Court of Appeal affirmed its own 2003 ruling permitting ‘shelf orders’ extending the time limit generally (rather than for specific dealings) and upheld the trial judge’s addition of the applicants (parties to some of the transactions with the bankrupt companies who were not present when the shelf order was made) to the proceedings to void the transactions.
  • Uelese v Minister for Immigration and Citizenship [2013] FCAFC 86 concerns the statutory obligation to consider the interests of a non-citizen’s children in immigration decision-making.  The federal Administrative Appeals Tribunal, affirming a decision to deport a New Zealand citizen with criminal convictions, only considered the interests of three of the man’s five Australian-resident children. The full court of the Federal Court held that a federal statute barred the Tribunal from considering the interests of his remaining two children, because their existence only emerged during the oral hearing and hence was not notified to the Minister in advance.

Amongst matters refused special leave was the issue of interim injunctions to stop Melbourne’s planned East-West Link, discussed here.

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About Jeremy Gans

Jeremy Gans is a Professor in Melbourne Law School, where he researches and teaches across all aspects of the criminal justice system. He holds higher degrees in both law and criminology. In 2007, he was appointed as the Human Rights Adviser to the Victorian Parliament's Scrutiny of Acts and Regulations Committee.