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Strata Drama: Kicking Back the Curtain on NSW Disclosure Obligations
What area(s) of law does this episode consider? | Disclosure obligations in strata management. |
Why is this topic relevant? | Strata schemes form a vital part of Australia’s property market, with millions of Australians currently calling strata title properties home. However, an aspect of strata management that has come under heavy scrutiny in recent years is the disclosure of commissions and benefits received by managing agents. These financial incentives, which often come from insurance providers or contractors, have raised concerns regarding conflicts of interest and the fiduciary duties owed to owners corporations. The Strata Schemes Management Act 2015 (NSW) seeks to address these concerns by mandating disclosure of commissions, gifts, and payments to strata managers. However, there is ongoing debate about whether strata managers should even be allowed to accept such commissions, with some arguing that these financial arrangements create an inherent conflict that is difficult to navigate within the bounds of strata management duties. For strata lawyers and managing agents alike, understanding the regulatory framework and legal obligations around disclosure is essential. Without clear and open communication, owners corporations may struggle to make informed decisions about the management of their properties. |
What legislation is considered in this episode? | Strata Schemes Management Act 2015 (NSW) (‘Strata Schemes Management Act’) Property and Stock Agents Act 2002 (NSW) (‘Property and Stock Agents Act’) |
What cases are considered in this episode? | Community Association DP No. 270180 v Arrow Asset Management Pty Ltd & Ors [2007] NSWSC 527
SafeWork NSW v Maluko Pty Ltd [2023] NSWDC 274; SafeWork NSW v The Owners – Strata Plan No 93899 [2024] NSWDC 277; SafeWork NSW v Chris Darby Strata Pty Ltd [2024] NSWDC 360
Hospital Products Ltd v United States Surgical Corporation [1984] HCA 64
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What are the main points? |
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What are the practical takeaways? |
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Show notes | Benson, A. (2024), Thoughts from a strata lawyer Four Corners (2024), ‘The Strata Trap’, Australian Broadcasting Company |
DT = David Turner; AB = Allison Benson
00:00:00 | DT: | Hello and welcome to Hearsay the Legal Podcast, a CPD podcast that allows Australian lawyers to earn their CPD points on the go and at a time that suits them. I’m your host, David Turner. Hearsay the Legal Podcast is proudly supported by Lext Australia. Lext’s mission is to improve user experiences in the law and legal services, and Hearsay the Legal Podcast is how we’re improving the experience of CPD. Properties in strata schemes represent a vital part of Australia’s property market – millions of Australians call strata title properties home. However, an aspect of strata management that’s come under some pretty significant scrutiny in recent years, is the disclosure of commissions and benefits received by strata managing agents. Now these financial incentives, which often come from insurance providers or other contractors, have raised concerns about conflicts of interest and the fiduciary duties these agents owe to the owners corporations that engage them. The Strata Schemes Management Act 2015 (NSW) seeks to address these concerns by mandating disclosure of commissions, gifts, and payments to strata managers but there’s an ongoing debate about whether strata managers should even be allowed to accept commissions, with some arguing that these financial arrangements create an inherent conflict of interest that’s difficult to navigate within the bounds of their duties. Now, for strata lawyers and managing agents alike, understanding the regulatory framework and legal obligations around disclosure as they currently stand is essential. Without clear and open communication, owners corporations might struggle to make informed decisions about the management of their properties. Now, today we’re joined in the recording room by Allison Benson, Director of Kerin Benson Lawyers and the writer behind the insightful blog Thoughts from a strata lawyer. With extensive experience and a wealth of knowledge in all things strata, Allison is perfectly placed to share her valuable insights into disclosure obligations, how to comply with the current regulations, and what the future might hold for transparency in strata. Allison, thank you so much for joining me on Hearsay. |
00:02:05 | AB: | My pleasure, so thank you very much for having me. I love strata. I love working in strata. I’m a bit of a strata nerd, so I do apologise in advance for any of that. It is a really important area. It’s not a very sexy area of property law. In fact, property law isn’t very sexy, but we’ve got one in ten Australians living or working in strata – that was according to the latest Strata Insights Report that’s published by UNSW – their City Futures Group. It’s a huge issue and it affects 10% of Australia and then all of our relatives, friends, partners that work or live in strata themselves. |
00:02:40 | DT: | Absolutely, and I can only imagine that figure will continue to trend upwards. Now we’ve spoken to a few strata lawyers on the show. You say it’s not a particularly sexy area, but it does seem to be a growing one. It’s a hot topic. I know plenty of lawyers who are aspiring to specialise in strata like yourself. What do you think it is about strata that’s bringing professionals into the fold? |
00:03:01 | AB: | It is a growing area. I started in strata about 13, maybe 14 years ago now. I quite liked an area of law that involves people. You can have two situations that don’t look different, but different people in those situations and the outcomes can be completely different because, although the facts may be the same, the individuals and the personalities derive what happens from then on out. So it’s a really interesting area of law when you’ve got people doing things basically, or not doing things – very interesting. |
00:03:31 | DT: | There’s some great stories that come out of this area of practice. There’s cases about pets, about letterboxes, about the bins. I can see why this captures people’s imaginations, why we like hearing these stories from practice in strata law, because they’re so relatable. A lot of us have lived in a strata community at some point or another and these are stories about a small community of people self-governing and the chaos that comes along with self-governance. |
00:03:58 | AB: | Absolutely. Look, my favourite is the Guerrilla Gardeners where one group in the scheme wanted a cottage garden, the other group wanted a tropical garden and surprise, surprise, overnight the garden would be completely replanted in accordance with whichever group didn’t have their tropical or cottage garden theme. The amount of time, effort and money that went into changing a garden overnight – amazing! So there’s all sorts of little stories like that that happen in strata and governance of strata is a really big thing. It’s growing. There’s a lot of stories to tell because people are just uniquely different. You give somebody a rule, other people will be looking to try and break it. The majority of people will try and abide by it, but in strata, we’ve got a particularly complex set of rules and the disclosure obligations that we’ve got, the inherent conflicts of interest that we’ve seen coming out on the news recently, they are some of the reasons why people are finding it hard to comply because the rules can be a bit complicated. |
00:04:54 | DT: | Yeah. Well, let’s talk about that. That’s our topic for today: disclosure obligations in strata schemes. As you said, the ABC recently conducted an investigation into this, into insurance companies; ‘commissions kickbacks’ as they were described. Tell me a little bit about what is being alleged by the ABC in their report. |
00:05:11 | AB: | Sure. Well, it’s actually an ongoing series by the ABC. The most recent one actually came out just today, and it was about a lady over in Perth. And so that’s another important thing – this is national, this isn’t just New South Wales based. This is happening in every state and territory in Australia, and that’s why it’s getting people’s attention. It’s their homes, it’s their money, and people can’t escape from the issues. So the latest report today was that a lady’s owners corporation was being charged for gardening services, but they didn’t have any gardens. |
00:05:41 | DT: | Yeah. |
00:05:41 | AB: | So this fee just kept on appearing, they kept on having to pay the levies for these gardening services, but there were no gardens to mow or to plant. That was the latest allegation that came out and then there were a few other things that the owners corporation were being charged for and the services just were not being provided. Things like removing a lock, for instance, so that they could access their meter boards so that they could get work done – that was the very latest. The one that everybody is currently talking about is insurance commissions and this has been on the radar for a while. So CHOICE first took up the banner, OCN Network, which is Owners Corporations Network, also took up the banner, and it’s all about what should and shouldn’t be disclosed with insurance commissions. TIP: You may have already seen this ABC investigation, but if you haven’t, the investigation we just mentioned was conducted by the program Four Corners, and it revealed widespread unethical practices in the Australian strata management industry. The investigation related to hidden fees, kickbacks, and overcharging in strata schemes. Four Corners called for submissions from the public and over 2,000 responses from the public highlighted cases of questionable charges, phantom fees, and, well, let’s say cosy relationships between strata firms and contractors. The investigation exposed senior industry figures like Tony Irvine, the president of the Strata Community Association, who was caught joking about profiting from government schemes like the Strata Hub. His predecessor, Stephen Brell, stepped down after admitting to receiving undisclosed kickbacks. Cases of overcharging, like that of Michael Bluwol, who found a report billed twice by his strata manager, Mason and Brophy, show a pattern of financial misconduct, Four Corners says. In Melbourne, Alison Parkes discovered her strata firm was charging for phantom debt notices. In these cases, firms often help themselves to owners’ funds without permission, the program alleged. The investigation also uncovered lucrative kickback arrangements between strata firms and contractors. For instance, Bright & Duggan, one of Australia’s largest companies, was allegedly receiving commissions from multiple service providers, which Four Corners says inflated costs for apartment owners in those buildings. Furthermore, strata management contracts often contain what might be said to be unfair termination clauses, making it difficult for owners to switch companies. Some strata companies use legal threats to prevent clients from leaving and demanding exorbitant termination fees. The Four Corners program gave a specific example in the form of the company Strata Plan, which despite its membership being revoked by the strata industry’s peak body continues to operate as a strata managing agent. The ABC investigation also suggested that corporate buyouts, M&A activity, has led to further conflicts of interest as large companies vertically integrate strata management, insurance and repair services into single corporate groups, which it said drove up costs for apartment owners. |
00:06:31 | DT: | So tell me a bit more about these commercial arrangements. Let’s actually start with some of these bogus fees and charges, because for some of our listeners who don’t practice in the area, or maybe it’s been a while since they’ve lived in a strata scheme themselves, how does a situation like that arise? How does it come to pass that the owners corporation is being charged gardening services when they don’t have a garden? |
00:08:49 | AB: | Yeah, and I mean, that’s pretty outrageous, isn’t it? |
00:08:51 | DT: | It is. |
00:08:52 | AB: | It’s something that’s really obvious. You look around and say, “well, where’s the lawn that’s going to be mowed? Holy heck, I haven’t got one. Why am I being charged this?” I think for a lot of these, the problem stems from you have an annual general meeting where you issue your levies, which people have to pay to get things like the power being turned on, insurance being paid – and we’ll circle back to insurance – lawns being mowed, strata managers being paid, legal services, engineer services, you know, repairs, money there for the plumber when something happens to the plumbing lines but when you get that information, you get it once a year in your Annual General Meeting, and it is provided in a way that isn’t easily understood by most people. I sometimes struggle to understand these reports, and I see them daily. |
00:09:39 | DT: | And it’s the strata managing agent who’s responsible for, well, paying the invoices of the gardener who maybe doesn’t exist. They’re supposed to be at the helm, protecting the interests of the owners corporation. What is happening for these bogus fees to show up on the owners corporation’s list of expenses? |
00:10:00 | AB: | That’s a really good question and I should just put it this way. The majority of strata managers are doing the right thing. We’re hearing about the shocking people that are just not playing by the rules. The majority are playing by the rules but, I say to people all the time, “where there’s money, somebody is going to want more than their fair share.” It just tends to be some form of human nature. So when you are looking at a strata scheme, and some of these schemes are huge, so you might be getting a scheme with hundreds of lots in it. Is everybody going to go down each particular invoice, each particular line item in the reports? Well, the reports, if they were actually set up that way, you could, but they’re not. What you actually find is you’ll get a grouping in your Annual General Meeting financial statements, and it might just say consultants fees and then the total paid for the year. It might say something like repairs or maintenance and depending on how the bill has been classified, you might find the bogus gardening services coming under repair and maintenance and you don’t actually see the invoice unless you dig deeper. So it’s reasonably easy if people aren’t paying attention to hide payments in strata schemes. |
00:11:16 | DT: | You make a good point. This is not a widespread practice in the industry for strata managing agents. Every industry has its bad apples and it’s that very few, number of agents who we’re talking about here. We’re not talking about a widespread industry practice, but I suppose what you’re describing there is the managing agent is receiving a kickback from the various service providers, some of whom provide legitimate services to strata schemes that the agent manages, in return for allowing them to charge those services in places where they might not be providing those services. |
00:11:49 | AB: | Oh, absolutely. And I’m not saying that there’s legitimate services that aren’t being provided. So the insurance commission’s issue, which was the 10th of September, ABC report – insurance was being provided, but there were actually a couple of things happening. One was that the owners corporations have to get three insurance quotes or they have to explain in writing to the strata scheme why three insurance quotes couldn’t be provided. TIP: So Allison just mentioned the requirement for strata managers to provide three insurance quotes. That requirement can be found in section 166 of the Strata Schemes Management Act 2015 (NSW) in New South Wales and in equivalent sections around the country. That section states that managing agents must present the owners corporation with at least three quotes from different providers for each type of insurance that they propose and if fewer than three quotes are available, then they have to provide written reasons why that is. Now, while the section doesn’t explicitly state whether quotation requirements apply every year or only when a new policy is being put in place, the language suggests that the obligation arises when the agent “proposes insurance” rather than when a policy is initiated or renewed. In other words, the obligation to provide quotations is triggered by the agent recommending insurance, not by the act of the owners corporation entering into or renewing a contract of insurance. It’s about the agent’s role in procuring that contract to come into place, I suppose. For existing policies under consideration for renewal, the agent may have fulfilled this duty if the quotations were provided when the policy was originally affected but if an agent is earning commission from those renewals, then they need to be careful. That incentive could influence how the renewal is being presented to the owners corporation, potentially leading to the agent proposing the renewal and triggering the requirement to provide quotes again under section 166. Remember, the requirement is activated when the agent “proposes insurance”, the Act doesn’t define the word proposes, but we can infer that this involves some overt action. Merely requesting a quote from insurers selected by the owners corporation themselves probably wouldn’t meet that threshold, whereas requesting quotes from insurers chosen by the agent might do. So what was happening? They go, they get the quotes, and then one quote in this particular scheme that was being talked about was substantially cheaper. It was by an insurance company that wasn’t related in any way, shape or form to the strata management firm. The broker and the insurer that were related to the strata management firm said that the unrelated insurer’s quote had been withdrawn when it hadn’t. And so the owners corporation ended up with a much dearer quote that eventually, the money flowed through to the broker and to the insurer. So the uninvolved insurer is saying we didn’t withdraw our quote. The quote still stands as far as they knew, but I’ll say the involved insurer that did receive or take part in, whether it was a kickback or whether it was a commission that was not disclosed or disclosed properly, there wasn’t enough detail in the report to say that, but they said it had been withdrawn, and that was clearly faulty. |
00:14:57 | DT: | And I suppose these examples are the ones which captured our attention, the attention of the media because they’re so flagrant, probably bordering on criminal, but what’s happening every day in Australian strata schemes, as you say, it’s a national issue, is that strata agents are being paid commissions by insurers and other service providers, which is lawful provided that they are disclosed. So as the law stands today, what are the disclosure obligations on strata managers? |
00:15:26 | AB: | So you can lawfully obtain a commission from the insurance. What has been happening is that there has been a small percentage of firms that were not disclosing or not disclosing properly and the example I just gave, that was not a non-disclosure because they disclosed the commission, I believe. They just didn’t disclose that there was a cheaper quote from an unrelated party. |
00:15:49 | DT: | Yeah. And in fact, outright lied about the availability of it. |
00:15:52 | AB: | Yeah, pretty much. So what has happened is that, for instance, with the Netstrata debacle – and that was the previous ABC report – was they were receiving commissions in excess of three times what the product was actually worth. |
00:16:08 | DT: | Oh my goodness. |
00:16:09 | AB: | So it was a huge commission. That was the ABC allegation. And there is a fair trading investigation going on about that. TIP: Another ABC investigation has revealed that Netstrata, a prominent strata management firm, has been allegedly overcharging apartment owners for insurance brokerage fees, often up to three times the industry standard brokerage fee, and engaging in undisclosed kickbacks from contractors and suppliers. Netstrata operates a wholly owned insurance subsidiary within its corporate group called Strata Insurance Services, which has charged clients fees as high as 64% of the insurance premium – the typical insurance brokerage fee is around 20%. Additionally, the company has undisclosed financial relationships with different maintenance and service providers like WinFire and Strata Energy Services. Netstrata has denied any wrongdoing, and Managing Director Stephen Brell has acknowledged the need to review the company’s practices following the ABC’s investigation but the systemic issues identified extend beyond Netstrata alone, and there are broader calls for industry wide reform and stronger consumer protections in the strata management sector. So, you can receive commissions, that is lawful, but you have to disclose under the Act. So, it should be in the strata manager’s management agreement as to whether they’re going to take commissions, and if they’re going to take commissions, what the percentage of the insurance commission is going to be. Now, I’ve seen a lot of these agreements, and some of them just outright say, “we don’t take commission,” and I’d be steering people towards those sort of firms. Other firms say we’ll take commission, but it could be 10 to 20% of the insurance premium. Okay. It’s disclosure, but is that full disclosure? Probably not because 10 to 20% can be a fair difference when you’re talking about $50,000 worth of insurance or more for some of the bigger schemes. So disclosure does, under the Strata Schemes Management Act, cure some ills, but not all ills. So if you receive insurance commissions or any commissions, you need to disclose it. If you receive training or services, you need to disclose it. If you receive a gift over $60, you need to disclose it, so that the owners corporation can approve it. |
00:18:22 | DT: | And just before we move off disclosure obligations, why does it matter to the owners corporation what the size of the commission is? |
00:18:28 | AB: | Well, it can be huge. So a lot of the strata managers, and it was an old model that was in a lot of strata management firms, it could be up to a third of their profit. And so they could go in with these management agreements that were substantially cheaper than their competitors because they weren’t taking the profit at the front. They were taking the profit from the insurance commissions. So that’s one thing. It allows you to compare apples with apples. You might have a scheme that say, “here’s a $10,000 management agreement” but they’re not taking commission. You might have another scheme that has a $5,000 management agreement proposal. And people go, “oh, look, well, I’m saving half the money!” They might not be and you don’t know what your premium is going to be in any one year. You can have a fair guess at it, but premiums have been increasing and increasing. So you might go from a $40,000 premium to a $50,000 premium, depends on the amount of claims you’ve been making in the year as well. So it can really vary how much the strata manager is earning but also how much the owners corporation is paying in the end because an insurer is not, nobody for that matter, is going to be paying money just for the sake of it. They’re going to recoup that money somehow. |
00:19:40 | DT: | Yeah, that’s what it comes down to isn’t it, that that commission is being recouped in the premiums that the owners corporation is paying for insurance directly or indirectly. |
00:19:49 | AB: | Directly or indirectly. That’s absolutely what’s happening. And that happens when there’s kickbacks as well. I’ve known a particular strata manager that was really, really happy to tell me that they got their kitchen renovated by one of their tradies and I said, “oh, okay, well, that’s lovely. Did they do a good job?” Showed some interest in it. They said, “yes, yes, yes.” I said, “oh, how much did it cost?” “Nothing. What do you mean?” That was what the strata manager said to me and I went, “I’m sorry. It didn’t cost you anything.” She said, “no, of course it didn’t. It was my tradie. I give him work all the time.” |
00:20:20 | DT: | Yeah, I see. |
00:20:21 | AB: | That happens a lot, unfortunately, in this industry and that to me would be a kickback. |
00:20:27 | DT: | Yeah. Well, absolutely. |
00:20:28 | AB: | It’s definitely a benefit you’ve received. Did that person disclose it? Well, it’s actually before the disclosure obligations came in. Officially under the Act, there has always been a fiduciary duty as an agent to disclose, but those sorts of stories, I think every single strata lawyer could tell you one of those, at least. |
00:20:44 | DT: | Well that’s probably a good segue into talking about the obligations of the strata manager or the strata managing agent more broadly. As you say, the disclosure obligations are only one obligation on managing agents to the owners corporation. They also have a fiduciary obligation. How does that fiduciary obligation arise? |
00:21:01 | AB: | Well, like any agent and principal relationship, there’s going to be a fiduciary relationship. So in this case, they actually have a statutory duty under the Property and Stock Agents Act. You can have a look at the Code of Conduct there, it’s in Schedule 1 of the regulations for that Act, and it very, very clearly states things like, you have a fiduciary duty. You must act in a fair and honest and transparent manner. You must put the interests of your principal – the owners corporation – ahead of your interests. So really stock standard stuff for a fiduciary. TIP: There’s not really a straightforward definition of the term “fiduciary” at law. In Hospital Products Ltd v United States Surgical Corporation, probably the seminal case on what it means to be a fiduciary, Justice Mason described commonly recognised fiduciary relationships as those involving “trust and confidence”, or confidential relationships. In simpler terms, a fiduciary relationship exists when one person has undertaken responsibility or function for another, giving the other person a reasonable expectation that the fiduciary will act in their best interests, to the exclusion of their own interests or any third party’s interests. The common examples that we think about are, of course, solicitor and client, that’s the classic, principal and agent, that sort of thing. The existence and scope of a fiduciary relationship in a particular case, though, depend heavily on the specific circumstances. Any contract or agreement between the parties plays an important role in determining whether a fiduciary relationship exists, as both can coexist, as affirmed in Hospital Products Ltd v United States Surgical Corporation. And implied terms in those contracts can be just as significant as the express ones. For example, trust and reliance may be implied in cases where transactions aren’t conducted at arm’s length or where one party is especially vulnerable. The determination of whether a strata manager holds a fiduciary role really depends on the specific duties they undertake, which can vary under different administration agreements. A title might suggest a fiduciary relationship but it can’t always be a reliable indicator. In New South Wales, the title strata managing agent implies a principal agent relationship, which, as I said before, is a classic fiduciary relationship but the accuracy of that implication, based on the title, really depends on the terms of the agreement between the owners corporation and the managing agent. Since these agreements differ between management companies and across jurisdictions, there’s no universal answer. In most cases, however, the roles carried out by strata managing agents and body corporate managers are likely to place them in fiduciary relationships. When a strata manager acts as a delegate for an owners corporation or its committee, they’re placed in a position of trust and confidence, establishing a fiduciary relationship. Similarly, if the strata manager assumes the responsibilities of secretary or treasurer of the owners corporation or handles its bank accounts, they take on fiduciary duties in that way. On the other hand, if a strata manager is only responsible for maintaining records on the Strata Roll and have limited other responsibilities, their role might not involve the level of trust and confidence necessary to establish a fiduciary relationship at common law. So they have a statutory obligation. There’s a contractual obligation. Have a look at some of the management agreements. And in those management agreements will be topics around fiduciary duties, the SCA agreements, which is the predominant one in New South Wales. I don’t know they actually come out and say you have a fiduciary duty, but they do say you must comply with the Property Stock Agents Act and you also have just a common law duty as a fiduciary. It’s inescapable. Having said that though, it’s a really hard duty to explain to a lay person. It’s a really hard duty to explain to other lawyers sometimes. |
00:24:29 | DT: | Yeah, I mean, as solicitors, as lawyers, we have a well established understanding of the nature of a fiduciary obligation. We are the classic example of the fiduciary, the lawyer and client. And if I think about a scenario in which a lawyer were to receive a commission for recommending a product, or procuring that one of their clients obtain a product, if for example a litigation funder paid me a commission for introducing them to a client, or we think about the cases around litigation funding or contingency fees where the litigation funder is the solicitor. That’s looked down on very strongly indeed for our profession. How do the fiduciary obligations of the strata managing agent sit neatly with their ability to accept commissions? Some people say that it’s impossible for those to sit together. |
00:25:18 | AB: | I’m erring towards the side of; it’s impossible. It’s really hard for us as lawyers sometimes to look at conflicts of interest. Do I? don’t I? Or is it a perceived conflict of interest? Is it an actual conflict of interest? We’ve been through uni. We’ve been looking at this. We’re a very highly regulated profession. To have people that are effectively lay people, they haven’t had legal training. There is now a licensing scheme under the Property and Stock Agents Act for our strata managers but it doesn’t have a heck of a lot in it to require people to know the legislation effectively. It’s really difficult. So I think where you have duties that are very complex, I would err on the side of just saying, it’s really impossible, unless you are going to explain these duties in minute detail through the licensing process and unless you were going to follow up in some regulatory manner, just outright ban it. It’s going to be easier. It’s going to be a much more transparent system as well and it’s going to professionalise the industry and so the strata management industry as a whole is trying to raise their profile and to say “we are professionals”. Well, you either regulate the heck out of it, like you do with lawyers, and you train your people to understand what a fiduciary duty is, or you outright ban it if you don’t think that that’s going to be a possibility. |
00:26:39 | DT: | Yeah. I mean, as you say, we are a highly regulated profession. Some of our listeners are listening to this episode for the very reason that they’re obliged to educate themselves every year, including about their ethical obligations, and that obligation isn’t at the moment imposed on strata managing agents, but even with all of the education in the world, it’s hard to reconcile an ability to receive a financial benefit for making a recommendation or introducing a client to a product and that highest obligation of the fiduciary, even for solicitors, who, as you say, are a highly regulated profession, we’ve done away with industry practices and commercial practices that have put that fiduciary relationship at risk like the old solicitor’s mortgage schemes. So it does seem like no matter how highly or tightly the managing agent profession was regulated, tested, educated, there would be a fundamental conflict between that fiduciary obligation and the ability to take commissions and kickbacks from insurers and service providers. |
00:27:38 | AB: | And that’s my position. I just think it collides with it. There is just a fundamental problem in doing so. The other issue that I have is one; education – you cannot educate people enough about this and it is in some ways a really hard obligation to get your head around a fiduciary obligation. What does it involve? Well, as lawyers know, you can’t prefer your interest over your principal’s. You certainly cannot take money without disclosing it to them. You have to fully disclose. Well, what does full disclosure mean? What does adequate disclosure mean? And trying to explain this to people, as in strata managers, that will get upwards of 300, 500, emails a day from their lot owners that they’re trying to juggle, they’re not just sitting there waiting to receive this training. They are actively, most of them, trying to manage the buildings to the best of their ability. They just simply don’t have the time or the capacity to do any more of this training, which is why I think it’s easier just to say fundamentally, it’s wrong, it’s very difficult to disclose properly and disclose to who? You might have a scheme with 300 lot owners. You might disclose it in writing, but does everybody understand English? Does everybody understand what you’re actually telling them? The likelihood is very, very low. You might talk about it at a general meeting. Okay, again, does everybody understand English? Does everybody attend the meeting? Does everybody read the disclosure documents? No, I can tell you that from attending many, many years of strata committee and general meetings. People don’t necessarily read the documents and I could probably count on my hands and my toes – so 20 – in the last 13 years where I had a full attendance of every single lot owner at a meeting in a scheme. So it’s a difficult topic as I said – difficult for us to understand what adequate disclosure is, as lawyers, and it varies according to the situation as well. |
00:29:49 | DT: | Now, I want to return to calls for reform about this in a little while, but you mentioned how difficult it is to identify what adequate disclosure really means. Of course the legislation sets out some black letter requirements that it be disclosed and the amount of it but there are pragmatic, practical challenges with that as you’ve identified. So if you’re advising an owners corporation, if you are an owners corporation or a member of its committee, what can you be doing, practically speaking, to ensure that you’re getting as much information as possible about possible commissions so that you can responsibly disclose that to voting members? |
00:30:26 | AB: | And that’s the thing. Is it the strata committee’s job to constantly ask their strata manager to disclose, which is what you kind of implied? No, it’s not. It’s the principal’s job to be disclosing this. So the strata managers really should be disclosing it. The strata committees I encourage them to check and there is a mechanism under the Act for strata committees to require an owners corporation’s strata manager to provide them with information about payments either received or payments made by the strata manager. There’s a formal process under the Act and we can put the details in the description for you, but it requires the strata manager to respond and it is an offence if they don’t respond. |
00:31:09 | DT: | It’s an offence. |
00:31:10 | AB: | Yeah, it is an offence. Having said that, we don’t have much in the way of penalty units to spare. It’s not much. It could be seen as a cost of doing business if the disclosure is going to reveal something that is particularly juicy or high value. So I think it’s about 50 penalty units, which is not a heck of a lot. |
00:31:29 | DT: | No. Although I suppose once the committee is sufficiently resolved to exercise that power, you might think that at that point there’s a risk of the managing agent keeping the gig such that they might want to comply. |
00:31:44 | AB: | Absolutely. Absolutely. So the strata manager, basically if they’re receiving these notices from the strata committee, puts them on notice that these guys are going to be on the ball and are going to be checking. So that’s a really good mechanism. It does mean though that the strata manager is probably going to be charging the owners corporation for their time to respond to these requests and they are allowed to do that under their strata management agreements for additional duties. That’s generally disclosed in their management agreements, but it’s a really good mechanism to use and as I said before, when you were looking at financial statements and you just have a grouping, it could be consultants – I’ve seen that line item on financial statements. What consultants? Who? What for? What do we get them to do? I didn’t see a consultant’s invoice. That can hide any number of people and any number of invoices. |
00:32:37 | DT: | Yeah, absolutely. And as you say, there’s a real power imbalance, as there commonly is in fiduciary relationships, in that most strata members, well, they may not be equipped to read financial documents but even if they are, they probably just don’t have the time. |
00:32:51 | AB: | That’s the thing. We’re talking about unpaid, generally, volunteers doing this for the good of their community. Yes, it’s their asset and in a lot of cases, it’s the biggest asset people will ever have, so there is a bit of a vested interest, but the vast majority of lot owners are pretty apathetic, to be honest, leaving the people who do step up to have to do an awful lot. So if I’m going to work, I’m coming home, do I really want to go and start digging through a portal to try and find invoices to make sure that everything’s been done appropriately? Probably not. I probably just want to pour a glass of red wine, have some dinner, and watch a bit of TV. |
00:33:29 | DT: | Yeah, well I have some sympathy for that position. In fact, you’re saying how much work it is for the members who do choose to get involved is making me feel a little bit guilty, Allison, because I know that every strata scheme that I have lived in, I’ve never really been too involved in the inner workings of the scheme. So it does create a real environment that is ripe for a bad actor to exploit. |
00:33:51 | AB: | Absolutely. And I didn’t mean to name and shame you. In fact, I didn’t name and shame you. You outed yourself. |
DT: | I outed myself, didn’t I? | |
AB: | You outed yourself. | |
00:33:59 | DT: | So the Strata Schemes Management Act sets out some legislative requirements for disclosure, but that’s not the whole of the law so far as the disclosure obligations of managing agents are concerned, is it? |
00:34:10 | AB: | No, it’s not and I keep on saying common law duties, there is a common law fiduciary duty. One of the really good cases in this area, if anybody is a little bit of a strata nerd like myself, or just wants to investigate fiduciary duties, is the case of Arrow Asset Management. That case, it’s all about a community association and a developer. The developer, and I can name it, it’s a case that has been cited often, and it’s out there in the strata industry, so the developer was Aqualand. They entered into a management contract with another company, Arrow, and they took payment of $190,000. for that. The management contract was actually for the community association to be paying Arrow to provide building management services, I believe it was. So the developer basically parachuted off the back of the development with $190,000 having signed the community association up to this long term contract. It was found to have owed fiduciary duties to the owners corporation because the owners corporation was vulnerable at that point. I cannot recall whether it actually had been incorporated yet, so as in the community association plan registered, if it had been, it had only just been registered and the developer still had majority control. So it could force the agreement to be entered into. |
00:35:32 | DT: | And so I guess the important takeaway from this case is that fiduciary obligation, which was found to exist, did not arise as a matter of statute in that case? |
00:35:40 | AB: | No, absolutely not and it was a really good decision. So if people are interested, have a look from about paragraph 210 onwards about disclosure. I mean, there’s some really good statements in there about fiduciary obligations. Again, honesty, transparency, disclosure, don’t prefer your own interests. They’re pretty fundamental ones. The disclosure obligations were really quite interesting. And that was where McDougall said, well, there had been disclosure, but was there adequate disclosure and went through the case law and effectively said adequate disclosure, you need to actually have a look at what the statutory obligations were, and you need to have a look at the facts and circumstances in the matter then you need to actually hold this up as an objective standard. So in this case, there had been statutory obligations to disclose, they were very, very weak statutory obligations, basically to say, we’re going to enter into this contract, we intend to enter into the contract but was that adequate disclosure? No, not in all of the facts and the circumstances, because just saying we’re going to enter into a contract doesn’t necessarily tell you that the developer’s going to walk away with $190,000 for signing you up to this long term contract. So, fulsome disclosure is required. That was not considered fulsome or adequate disclosure. |
00:37:02 | DT: | And that Arrow Asset Management case is a useful reminder that the disclosure obligations under the Strata Schemes Management Act, that there is a commission and how much is it – that might be the codified aspect of the disclosure obligation. That’s the bit in the legislation that is clear as day and unequivocal, but there is a source of disclosure obligation in the form of the fiduciary obligation, which is both statutory and a duty arising at common law, that extends those obligations, as you say, in a way that is unique to the facts and circumstances of the commission or the kickback or the benefit being received by the agent and the nature of the disclosure to the agent’s principal is informed by those facts and circumstances beyond what the statute might say about what constitutes sufficient disclosure. |
00:37:51 | AB: | Absolutely. And I hate to sound boring, but there was actually a really good quote of McDougall, but basically saying “where there’s a relevant statutory scheme, an examination of the nature and sufficiency of the disclosure should take into account the statutory scheme, including in particular,” in this case, the Asset Arrow one, “the requirements of a particular section in the Act.” And then went on to say “informed consent requires disclosure of all the relevant information.” |
00:38:19 | DT: | So it’s a consideration in what constitutes adequate disclosure, but it is not the end of the story and that’s a useful reminder for anyone advising either a strata committee or a strata managing agent, when it comes to identifying and advising on what constitutes adequate disclosure, it’s not enough to just say, “well, look at the Act, look at the obligations in the Act to disclose. That’s what you have to do.” It’s beyond that. |
00:38:44 | AB: | Absolutely. And look, I’ve used this before. I have said earlier in the podcast that it is a difficult duty but when I’m explaining it to lay people that haven’t had any legal training, I say, “well, does it pass the pub test? Does it smell right? Really, if you said this to your mate, “well, I’m going to refer this person and I’m getting $500 onto the table.” Does that sound right to you?” So it is difficult to explain all the really complex legal cases and the decisions, but then in some ways it’s really simple as well. Does this smell right? Would it pass the pub test? And a lot of these cases that are now being reported on by the ABC, they don’t pass the pub test. And I think if you don’t understand anything else about fiduciary duties, you really should understand you cannot prefer your own interest. You need to disclose if you think there is any conflict of interest, or if you think there is any payment or commission or benefit that you may receive because of your relationship with your principal, and what you are telling people, does that pass the pub test? Would you want your mum, for instance, to be told, “oh yes, look, that’s a great solar panel,” when the solar panel has actually been subject to a recall notice? |
00:40:01 | DT: | Yeah. |
00:40:02 | AB: | That wouldn’t pass the pub test. |
00:40:05 | DT: | No, it would not. |
00:40:06 | AB: | I do say this to my clients. “I would give this advice to my mum,” and then I quite carefully qualify that to say, “I actually do like my mum. So I would give her good advice as opposed to some of my other relatives.” So you’ve just got to think about “how do I want to be treated? Would I treat somebody else that way?” That’s fundamentally what it comes down to. |
00:40:26 | DT: | Golden rule. I suppose another way of thinking about it is, would I want this conduct to continue reported on by the ABC? |
00:40:31 | AB: | Absolutely. Name and shame. And there will be more reporting. This is going to be an ongoing saga. There are now calls by the entities like OCN, by CHOICE, in particular about the insurance, but there are calls to get the ACCC involved. The ACCC sounds like they are really wanting to get their teeth into this. So I think it’s just going to start this ball rolling. I also do know that there is another bill that the Cabinet are looking at at the moment, and that is going to have further disclosure obligations. So, rather than moving into the “just completely ban this,” it seems like New South Wales Legislative has taken the approach of “we’re going to treat them like we treat the lawyers, like we treat the doctors; disclose, disclose, disclose. Let’s regulate this industry.” |
00:41:23 | DT: | Yeah, absolutely. And I suppose with this level of media attention and regulatory attention, we can certainly expect further law reform in the near future. TIP: Interestingly, strata managers and owners corporations have obligations that extend beyond the strata regulations, including into the work health and safety arena. Owners corporations of commercial or mixed strata schemes, along with strata managers, have obligations under the Work Health and Safety Act in New South Wales, and its largely identical cousins in other jurisdictions, and can face prosecution for breaches. In one notable case, an owners corporation, a strata manager, and a business within an industrial complex were each fined and prosecuted for violations of the Work Health and Safety Act following a fatal accident in June 2020. In that case, Maluko Proprietary Limited operated a business in the complex, which included eight units, and was initially constructed by Maluko in March 2017. The company retained unit 5 for its own use and sold the rest. The owners corporation was responsible for maintaining the common property, while Chris Darby Strata was a strata managing agent that managed repairs and maintenance, including day to day site management. The case concerned an incident where a van damaged a large metal sliding gate, which was part of the common property. Temporary repairs allowed the gate to be used manually, but it created a risk of it failing due to the absence of a stopper. The gate wasn’t removed from service and no warnings or risk assessments were conducted. In June 2020, a worker at the premises, Jose Martins, attempted to manually open the gate, but the lack of a stopper caused the gate to fall and fatally injure Mr Martins. The strata manager and the owners corporation were deemed to have management and control responsibilities under the Work Health and Safety Act. The court determined that the failure to address the risk of the gate following was a continuing offence with exposure to danger over several days. The owners corporation and strata manager didn’t meet their safety obligations, while Maluko with direct knowledge of the gate’s manual use was found even more culpable. However, the court found that residential owners corporations are generally exempt from the Work Health and Safety Act unless they employ workers, but strata managers aren’t. Commercial and mixed use schemes are subject to WHS obligations as workplaces. In this case, the owners corporation and strata manager were liable due to their management roles and failure to address the known risks. The court took into account each party’s financial capacity, the impact on Mr. Martin’s family, and the need for both general and specific deterrence of offences of this kind. The business within the complex was fined $375,000, reduced from $500,000 due to an early guilty plea. The owners corporation was fined $225,000, reduced from 300, 000, and the strata Manager $150,000, reduced from 200. Now, we’ve talked about the disclosure obligations under the Strata Schemes Management Act, we’ve talked about the fiduciary obligations under the Property Stock and Agents Regulation, which is made under the Property and Stock Agents Act. What other obligations under those two pieces of intersecting legislation arise? |
00:44:12 | AB: | So there are specific disclosure obligations under the Strata Schemes Management Act. So again, like disclosing, I’ve received a commission, I’ve received a service, I’ve received training or a benefit. They also have to disclose prior to their appointment if they are connected with the developer in any way, or if they’ve got any indirect or direct pecuniary interest in being appointed as a strata manager. And you might think, “well, they do because when they’re appointed, they’re going to get money for that.” That’s allowed, that’s assumed but when you are looking at some of the things that have been going on. So some strata management firms also have building management arms or repair and maintenance groups. They may have set themselves up to be insurance brokers and that was one of the factors that was raised on the ABC reporting. Where you’ve got directors or principals of strata management firms that also have financial interest in these service groups, and they are going to be referring their owners to those service groups, then there’s problems. Really, that should be disclosed. At that point, they haven’t referred anybody, but I think it would be a very, very fair thing to just stick your hand up, say, “by the way, we own this group. This is what the relationship is.” I’m all for transparency. I just think it hasn’t been transparent enough. TIP: The Property and Stock Agents Regulation 2022 supports the Property and Stock Agents Act 2002. When the regulations were introduced, they made several changes to strata management. Including that strata managing agents and their assistants were required to cooperate with owners corporations or associations when transferring management functions to them, which was applicable when the agent’s management contract was terminated. In theory, at least, this should make it easier for a strata owners corporation to terminate its contract with a managing agent or transfer that contract to another managing agent. So when the Strata Schemes Management Act, the 2015 Act, came in, it introduced this concept of a strata manager not being able to be appointed for 10 years after the registration of the strata scheme if they were connected with the developer. I immediately started getting phone calls from strata management firms to say, “how do we get around that?” |
00:46:32 | DT: | Yeah, interesting. |
00:46:33 | AB: | That was the mindset because it’s worth money to them. If they could get appointed by the developer, then the chances were that they would be appointed for another three years at the first Annual General Meeting. |
00:46:44 | DT: | Yeah, well, we know the power of defaults and the power of the status quo, right? We see this with insurance contracts often, and I suppose this justifies the size of some of the commissions we were describing before, that once you have the first engagement, the first insurance contract, the first appointment as managing agent, you’re very likely to get the second, third, fourth, and fifth because as human beings we just don’t like to make decisions too often. |
00:47:08 | AB: | Look, I know myself, I can’t be bothered changing insurers because it’s just too hard. I don’t want to be on the automated phone system forever. So I don’t. So I just renew it every year and I probably have lost myself money in that process. So I’m guilty of it myself. I understand that default is very, very powerful. Better the devil you know. |
00:47:29 | DT: | Yeah, sure. Well, like mortgages, insurances are notoriously sticky once you’ve got that initial contract. Okay, so we have some disclosure obligations under the Strata Schemes Management Act. We have some very robust sounding fiduciary obligations under the Property Stock and Business Agents Act but there’s a real practical difficulty in the performance of those obligations because there does seem to be an inherent conflict in the relationships that some managing agents have with insurers and other service providers and that fiduciary obligation. So, there are some proposals to remedy this through law reform. Tell me a bit about what’s proposed. |
00:48:09 | AB: | Sure. And I should also say that they are really robust provisions. A fiduciary duty is quite robust. You’ve got a statutory fiduciary duty and you’ve got the common law fiduciary duty. That should be robust. The problem is it’s just not well understood and it’s not well implemented. |
00:48:24 | DT: | Yeah. It’s a failure of, as you say, implementation. It’s a failure in practice rather than a failure in theory. |
00:48:31 | AB: | Absolutely. Absolutely. And it’s just pervasive throughout the strata industry. So developers have issues with this, with embedded networks, for instance, with long term management contracts. And these things are all a part of the reforms that are being looked at at the moment as well. So developers, that’s where it starts and then it just rolls through to the strata managers, then it rolls through to the insurers, the service providers. So it’s pervasive. The reforms that are coming up, they will, in my mind, not do a hell of a lot, quite frankly, being very, very, very honest. What they do is they increase the penalty units that an offense may bring quite dramatically. It goes from 50 penalty units for most of the offenses for failing to disclose, up to 100 penalty units. So it doubles it for individuals and it makes it 500 penalty units for a corporation. Having said that if I am the big evil strata manager and I’m receiving three times what the value of the service that is being provided is, I’m going to pay the $55,000 fine because I’m going to get away with it most times unless people are looking, and it’s a cost of business to me. So I don’t think just increasing the penalties really does do the job. There are some other more interesting things that they are doing, and this one I actually think is long overdue and I think it’ll work because people are now aware about the insurance commissions. So bringing it to people’s attention really does do a lot of the job because then people know to go looking. So one of the requirements is break down the insurance quotes, set out the levies as in the statutory levies, so like the emergency services fund levy that we had to pay when there was all the bushfires and things or the flood levy that was paid when there was a lot of flooding, set out the broker’s fee, set out the commission, which is considered to be different from the broker’s fee, set out the amount of the premium and then the GST. So those things all have to be broken down. So that will really help, but lot owners need to look at that. And if it looks like that broker’s fee and that insurance commission is high, you need to be challenging that. You need to be calling these people to account. Don’t just go with the default. And I know I’ve just said, don’t go with the default having admitted that I’m too lazy, not to myself, but I’m talking about me. I might save myself $100 by changing an insurer, these commissions and premiums can be tens of thousands of dollars. So that I think is a really good step forward. |
00:51:09 | DT: | Yeah, absolutely. As you say, this isn’t a problem with the severity of the penalty, it’s whether or not managing agents are ever going to be caught for this, because as we’ve just been discussing, most committees, most strata members just don’t have the time or the willingness or the mental headspace to investigate these things themselves and so I think you’re absolutely right, it’s likely that bad actors would view even a significantly larger penalty as a cost of doing business where the vast majority of the time that goes undetected. |
00:51:44 | AB: | Just slides under the carpet. |
00:51:45 | DT: | And so there’s regulatory efforts to make information more accessible to the committee and empower the committee to make decisions a little more easily with a little less legwork sound like great ideas to me. |
00:51:56 | AB: | Yeah, I think it’s a brilliant idea and insurance commissions did have to be disclosed but it might have been disclosed in a management contract that you signed two years ago. You’re not necessarily going to look at that. The 2015 reform said, “okay, well you have to now disclose it every year to the owners corporation” but that disclosure, if you’ve got a meeting pack and there’s 100 pages in that meeting pack, are you going to find that one paragraph that might be in 10 point font, if you’re lucky, and read what that disclosure actually is? No, I wouldn’t. |
00:52:29 | DT: | Seems pretty unlikely. |
00:52:30 | AB: | Well, look, I don’t have any trouble getting to sleep at night. If you do have trouble getting to sleep at night, I suggest you read some of these things, but then you might get a little bit outraged and be unable to sleep at night, so it might be counterproductive, but disclosure has been happening. It just has been buried. This will unbury some of the disclosures because it has to be broken down and it needs to be broken down for all of the quotes as well. So it might not be in the body of the meeting notice, but it would definitely be in the annexures. So the insurers will have to do this. Another really good thing that I think is going to help is that strata managers have to disclose if they have been using a service provider routinely. |
00:53:10 | DT: | Interesting. As in across schemes. |
00:53:14 | AB: | Yeah. So say for instance, I am manager A and I just like Harry Smith contracting. I don’t know a Harry Smith contracting, I should disclose, but I think Harry’s a great person and I just love using him because he does a really good job. Not that he gives me kickbacks or anything. He just does a really good job, my clients always say he’s a good fella. So I refer him to all of my schemes. I am now going to, as a strata manager, have to tell all of my schemes, “yes, I routinely use this person.” And that’s going to affect us as lawyers as well. So for instance, we were on a panel for one of the strata management firms. We had to tender to go on the panel. We were interviewed, we went through this selection process. And they do disclose, they say, “these people are on our legal services panel and this is the discount, we’ve negotiated with them.” It’s very, very different scenario. I mean, we’ve had other not so reputable agencies say, if you pay us some money, we will put you on our legal panel to which we promptly said, “thank you, but no thank you, go and find some other work.” |
00:54:14 | DT: | Yeah, I wonder if they would have disclosed. |
00:54:16 | AB: | I could bet your bottom dollar it wasn’t disclosed. And that would have been a breach of their fiduciary duty. I mean, that’s a clear one. And they’re asking a law firm to help them do that. I mean, that’s pretty obvious and pretty blatant. “Here, give us some money and we’ll tell our clients how good you guys are.” |
00:54:34 | DT: | But in the absence of that kind of kickback arrangement, some of these habitual uses of particular service providers, that’s not necessarily a bad thing to disclose. I think it could be a mark of trust to disclose – and resemblance to any person’s living or dead, entirely coincidental – I use Harry Smith Contracting all the time. No kickback, no commission, but does a great job and so I use them all the time. |
00:54:56 | AB: | Yeah, absolutely because then you can vouch for the person. So I don’t think it’s a bad thing that service providers are being routinely used. If you’ve got an important job, you don’t want to give it necessarily to Joe Blow when you’ve never heard of Joe Blow, just because you haven’t routinely used him or her, if Joe’s a male or a female, you want to give it to somebody that you trust. So, there’s nothing wrong with having trusted relationships. There’s nothing wrong with saying, “look, I’ve used this person a couple of times. They’ve done a really good job.” There’s also nothing wrong with saying, “I’ve used this person in a couple of schemes and run, don’t use them.” So it works both ways. And I think that’s just a normal fact of life. If you go and you want to do something new, wouldn’t you go and ask for a referral? There’s nothing wrong with giving referrals. |
00:55:43 | DT: | Absolutely. Allison, we’re nearly out of time, but before I let you go, as we said at the top of the episode, strata law is an area that captures our imaginations, it’s full of human stories. I can see why so many people want to enter the area and work in it more. For those of our listeners who are young professionals, maybe they’re just starting their legal career and they have an interest in doing strata work, what would be your advice to them on how to get started? |
00:56:07 | AB: | So easily, first thing you can do if you live in a strata, if you work in a strata, see if you can join the strata committee, go to a strata meeting. That’s the first thing you can do to see the flavour. Now, not all lawyers work in the big four, most of us work in smaller boutique organisations. There’s been an increasing move to specialisation in the industry, strata is one of those specialisations. It’s a really nice area to get into. Most of the people who have been working as strata lawyers in the field for a long time, we all know each other. There is, in fact, a law society that is just for the Australian strata lawyers, and in fact Australasian strata lawyers, I should say. So you could have a look at the Australian College of Strata Lawyers, ACSL. You can also just approach strata law firms if you’re interested in them. What is important is we want people that have got passion, people that can work with other people. There’s both transactional work, so preparing the management statements for these schemes, preparing advices, preparing bylaws, and bylaws are the fourth tier of government, basically. And then there’s the disputes and that’s where the really interesting stories come from but that’s another topic. |
00:57:20 | DT: | Allison Benson, thank you so much for joining me today on Hearsay. |
00:57:22 | AB: | Thanks for having me. |
00:57:33 | DT: | As always, you’ve been listening to Hearsay the Legal Podcast. I’d like to thank my guest today, Allison Benson, for coming on the show. Now, if you’re keen to hear more about recent strata decisions, check out episode 63 of the show; ‘Nosy Neighbors and Chatty Schnauzers: Best Practice Strata Governance’ with Marcus Carbone and Robert Pietriche. That one’s about the 2020 decision of Cooper v The Owners – strata Plan No 58068 [2020] NSWCA 250 which you may have heard of and it’s a fun case to learn about. If you’re an Australian legal practitioner, you can claim one continuing professional development point for listening to this episode. Whether an activity entitles you to claim a CPD unit is self assessed, as you know, but we suggest this episode entitles you to claim a substantive law point. For more information on claiming and tracking your points on Hearsay head to our website. Hearsay the Legal Podcast is brought to you by Lext, a legal technology company that makes the law easier to access and easier to practice, and that includes your CPD. Before you go, I’d like to ask you a favour, listeners. If you like Hearsay the Legal Podcast, please leave us a Google review. It helps other listeners to find us, and that keeps us in business. Thanks for listening, and I’ll see you on the next episode of Hearsay. |
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