Body Corporate 330324 v Brown (City Gardens) (No. 2) (HC)

The council successfully applied to adjourn a 12 week leaky building trial when the claimants tabled nearly 1,000 pages of reply evidence 5 weeks before the trial was due to start.

The court accepted that there was not enough time for the experts and witnesses giving evidence for the council to process the new evidence.

More importantly the court looks to be putting a stop to a practise where claimants have been providing minimal evidence upfront then "patching up" their evidence after they have seen the council's evidence. This is not truly reply evidence but additional evidence that should have been filed at the outset.

We look to have put a stop to this pressure tactic. The Judge noted that this case had caused the bench to reconsider whether reply evidence would ever be permitted in leaky building claims again.