In sittings on Friday, the High Court granted special leave to appeal the following four decisions:

• Commissioner of Taxation v Australian Building Systems Pty Ltd (in liq) [2014] FCAFC 133 concerns the taxation obligations of liquidators. The full court of the Federal Court held that a liquidator who sold a bankrupt company’s property was not required to withhold an amount from the proceeds to pay the company’s capital gains tax, because the liquidator had not received an assessment requiring it to pay the tax.
• R v Smith [2014] QCA 277 is an appeal against Smith’s conviction for a 1990 rape. The Queensland Court of Appeal dismissed all of Smith’s complaints, including the trial judge’s decision to permit the jury to reach a 11:1 majority verdict. It held that the trial judge was not obliged to disclose to the parties information from the jury about the state of their deliberations prior to permitting a majority verdict, characterising a recent Victorian decision to the contrary as clearly wrong.
• State of New South Wales v Fuller-Lyons [2014] NSWCA 424 concerns a tragic accident from 2001 where an 8 year-old with a cognitive impairment fell out of a train travelling at 100 km/h. The NSW Court of Appeal overturned the trial judge’s finding that the accident was due to the train station attendant’s failure to notice the child’s arm protruding from a door as it pulled away from Morisset station, holding that the evidence was equally consistent with the child propping open the door with a less visible object.
• WZARH v Minister for Immigration and Border Protection [2014] FCAFC 137 concerns the obligation to provide an oral hearing to an applicant for a protection visa. The full court of the Federal Court held that the applicant, who had been given an oral hearing before an independent merits reviewer, had a legitimate expectation to a further oral hearing after a new independent merits reviewer was appointed.