Travels etc.

On the 24th February 2015 (six months ago) the Owners Corporation of an apartment block lodged an application to NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal (NCAT) seeking orders to appoint compulsory manager of a strata scheme and to refund the fees paid to the former strata manager. The application caused by negligent and inacceptable behaviour by strata manager and included the following concerns: -        No proper service for two years -        Breaching of the rules and not following the orders of Owners Corporation -        Spending money on items that were not agreed or ordered by Owners Corporation -        Not servicing fire safety inspections and insurance for the building appropriately -        Other issues   All the documentation related to the above-mentioned problems has been submitted to the ...

While reading some paperwork regarding International Tax Law subject following statement drew my attention: "The complexity of the international tax rules makes it nearly impossible to diffuse the public sensibility about the issues." It is from the speech "Sense and Sensibility: The Policy and Politics of BEPS" by Manal S. Corwin.  The full text can be found here: https://www.kpmg-institutes.com/content/dam/kpmg/taxwatch/pdf/2014/beps-corwin-tillinghast-tn-100614.pdf That thought is not unique to tax law. In my experience of more than 3 years doing what I call “applied dispute resolution” which correlates with law research and paralegal activities I see that in any area of law, social matters, environmental, humanities, economics and others we can witness increasing level of challenges that our society face. Let’s take as an example The Law. Carefully crafted legal framework is one of the essentials of contemporary society. However ...

Have just completed a very interesting online course about US constitutional concepts, how it has been developed and different perspectives of its content and interpretations in regards to law. Professor Kermit Roosevelt provides several controversial points of view on constitutional topics with judges decisions and history in regards to it. In the context of contemporary chatter about freedom, democracy etc. this course should be able to help making an informed opinion based on existing knowledge and research up to date. The course is provided by University of Pennsylvania , in my opinion it's one of the best universities in the area of free online (MOOC) education so far. Course info .

Today have contributed to Australian law by defending my application at NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal. The Tribunal ordered exactly as I expected. The application was lodged 19th March and the hearing has been set up for today 14th April. It is related to the building defects that were reported originally in December 2011 and the builder made several attempts to fix it without a proper result. There were several factors to that: - Negligence by the sub-contractors - No quality assurance by the builder - Builder was not willing to fix the issue which involved dragging process of numerous inspections, involving Fair Trading, the builder, independent inspector etc. - The builder tried to be smart and started coming up with ways to recover their costs - though all the work they did was part of statutory warranty. The conciliation went well and the matter proceeded to the hearing with a mutual agreement by the applicant and the respondent (the builder). As expected, the ...

Have read the article  The Collapse of Big Law: A Cautionary Tale for Big Med In my opinion it is all logical. When instead of thinking about health (or law, or education) as a goal, but of money as a goal - this is a natural consequence. If everybody else around is focused on maximizing the profits why lawyers, teachers or medics should be exceptional? They are part of the society.

With the New Year resolutions came new wave of communication with the vendor and builder regarding unresolved defects from last year. Vendor has been contacted by the owner, because: - In the contract of sale there is a clause which states that all defects should be reported within 3 months after settlement and should be repaired by the vendor (and at the vendor's expense ) within 6 months after settlement - The vendor and their relevant contacts were notified numerous times about those defects and their response has been always "all issues will be resolved" which changed to "the building came with 12 months warranty and the responsibility passed on to all owners" - The owner didn't have any direct agreements or contracts with the builder. Therefore it has been decided to work with the vendor. An email correspondence with the vendor looked like this: Owner (O): Hi, it's been two years since the defects were reported, but not ...

Here's some interesting passage regarding law and justice: "Upon the authority which the great proprietors necessarily had, in such a state of things, over their tenants and retainers, was founded the power of the ancient barons. They necessarily became the judges in peace, and the leaders in war, of all who dwelt upon their estates. They could maintain order, and execute the law, within their respective demesnes, because each of them could there turn the whole force of all the inhabitants against the injustice of anyone. No other person had sufficient authority to do this. The king, in particular, had not. In those ancient times, he was little more than the greatest proprietor in his dominions, to whom, for the sake of common defence against their common enemies, the other great proprietors paid certain respects. To have enforced payment of a small debt within the lands of a great proprietor, where all the inhabitants were armed, and accustomed to stand by one another, w...

Awesome news: http://smh.domain.com.au/real-estate-news/nsw-strata-law-revolution-20131103-2wuy4.html It is apparent to anyone who lives in a strata unit that the current issues are serious and it should be something done about it at a legislation level. I have written about some of the existing problems sometime ago  http://traveloga.blogspot.com/2013/05/real-estate-strata-living.html In the course of new laws to be implemented, how they are going to enforce builders or developers responsibility? Will see.

Getting closer to the defects rectification, but not quite there yet. There are three major outcomes achieved: 1. Fair Trading has sent a report regarding the work that has not been completed by the builder. 2. The builder left one defect undone, but has been forced by Fair Trading to fix it. 3. The builder started begging for money from the owner for the work that has been done in accordance with Fair Trading rectification order. So they ask for money to be paid for the work they had an obligation to do to repair the defective work they did earlier. Though at the moment the issue remaining is not very critical, however it affects the quality of living in the purchased property. The builder sent people to fix the defect. The fixing is to reapply the silicon. The root cause of the issue has never been investigated properly. It is 1 year and 11 months since the time the defects were reported to the builder! It would take possibly the same time to build a new apartment from...

Just finished: English Common Law: Structures and Principles , University of London Interesting course. Good introduction to the history of English law and issues related to it's structure and to the EU presence. UPDATE: Got my grades recently. Happy with the result! There is another Law course that I'd like to recommend  Property and Liability: An Introduction to Law and Economics . In my opinion it's one of the best online courses that I have seen so far not just in Law, but in general. In regards to legal studies the course is a great introduction into the subject.

In today’s life very often we may catch ourselves on a thought that legal matters are usually very expensive, unpredictable and confusing. Legal system doesn't establish or execute Justice – it is subjective and depends on many factors. Some of them are: current geopolitical situation, location, nationality, social position, weather conditions, emotions etc. Therefore legal system is guided by the communal utilitarianism principle. Decisions based on that principle could go very often perpendicular with the perception of justice of individuals or even peoples. There is an opinion that justice and legal system is based on ethic and moral. This is a chicken and egg challenge to prove. All of it is basically rules of communal living and transactions among humans who inhabit certain area, i.e. a suburb, a town, a state, a country. So the law and legislation is an attempt to codify the rules of mutual existence for further enforcement and ease of transactions. Ethic is almost the...

Today is exactly 2 months since the Department of Fair Trading inspected the unit for defects and reported to the builder to fix the issues before 18/05/2013. Majority of the work has been finished only 12/06/2013. However the builder replaced only 2/3 of the floor in the living room and said than the remaining part has got a different cause. During the rectification process they said they will replace the entire floor, because it was apparently damaged. They used a couple of tricks as they went through the "rectification" process: 1. They were very slow and said that they were waiting for proper rain to test the waterproofing. The floor in the unit was removed in half for more than a month! When the deadline was about to hit, they called the owner and said that they are ready to replace the floor, but the owner has to use home contents insurance for that. The owner refused that "offer", so the builder started yelling. However they continued with floor...

According to Australian Bureau of Statistics ( http://abs.gov.au ) in 2011 (census data can be found here: http://www.censusdata.abs.gov.au/census_services/getproduct/census/2011/quickstat/0?opendocument&navpos=220 ), there were around 2.8 million people who lived in a flat, apartment or unit, which can be classified as "strata living". This number can be a bit higher at the moment, but still represents more than 10% of the population. Strata living rules ( http://www.fairtrading.nsw.gov.au/Tenants_and_home_owners/Strata_schemes.html ) that supposed to make communal living of people in NSW more streamlined and easier and to help resolve problems if required, in fact leave a lot of space for corruption, various issues, including loss of property value, defects, conflicts and confusion. However it would be short-sighted to just review the strata living rules in isolation from the way people tend to live here, from Australian laws and enforcement and the reality of ...

Have just finished an awesome free online course  Property and Liability: An Introduction to Law and Economics  by Richard Adelstein from Wesleyan University . The professor is great and his lectures are a pleasure to watch! The course is very well structured from easy to complex matters and has got many interesting examples. I also found myself very interested and involved in the course. Highly recommend to everyone interested in Law and related areas.

Today, Friday 26/04/2013 the builder has actually started the work to fix major defects! However this didn't just come easy. On 03/04/2013 it heavily rained and the water started leaking into the ground floor unit and damaged the floorboards. The owners of the unit contacted the builder and Fair Trading office, because the water leakage has been on the list of defects, but has never been properly addressed by the builder. The builder and the person who installed the windows/doors came to inspect the issue. They decided to re-seal the windows/doors to improve the waterproofing. On 17/04/2013 the Fair Trading Inspector and the builder came to mediate the defects situation. The builder looked like a student in front of the teacher trying to explain why the defects listed really appeared. However the inspector was really good and pointed out that everything had to be built up to standards and that the builder though sent sub-contractors to do the work in good faith has neve...

On 09/02/2013 the builder came to inspect the exact same defects they have been aware of since September 2012. During the inspection the builder verbally agreed to fix majority of those defects, rejected some of them as they believed those were maintenance problems and not the building problem and rejected their liability on some of the defects. The owners corporation requested a report, which should include a list a of defects and exact dates when those defects would be rectified. The builder verbally agreed with that. After 10 days - 19/02/2013 - the builder sent an email to the owners corporation and Fair Trading that included the unit numbers and the defects that will be fixed/not fixed. Some defects were missing from the list and as usual there were no firm dates. Owners Corporation have responded to that email (including Fair Trading) that the report is not complete. After three days - 21/02/2013 - the builder sent an email providing the contact details of the person...

Major building defects are still not resolved and the owners of most of the units didn't even bother to follow up. However some units are eager to finalise the process and fix the defects. One member of executive committee has built an online application on the Internet to get the response from the interested units what defects have been fixed and what are outstanding. With the results of that report owners corporation lodged a complaint with Fair Trading against the builder on the outstanding defects. The complaint was lodged on 16/01/2013. A week later, on 23/01/2013 Fair Trading called the owners corporation to confirm the details of the complaint. Same day they called the builder. Builder contacted owners corporation on 29/01/2013 to advise that they are coming to inspect the defects again! They explained it as they want to confirm what defects they are responsible for and that they are going to contact Fair Trading after the inspection. The builder advised they ar...

In the earlier post I described the timeline of the intriguing case of construction issues/defects resolution. What's obvious: Nobody is rushing to fix the earlier reported issues Vendors don't do anything to fix the issues Strata management doesn't assist in fixing the issues, but forward messages to the executive committee of the owners corporation Treasurer of the owners corporation Executive Committee is somehow involved in the process and communicates directly to vendor, strata manager and the builder. No visible results though, but just promises of better future. Research The owner initiated the following research: Strata rules to see who is responsible for what in terms of building defects Seeking legal advice to set up a plan for further actions against the Vendor and/or the Builder Requesting strata scheme account statement Outcomes There is no law for breach of contract. So legally there is no obligation to act as per contract of sale even ...

Situation Vendor has sold the property and signed the contract. As per contract of sale the vendor at their own expense needs to rectify defects within 6 months after settlement. Vendor engages their builder to rectify the defects. The Builder doesn't provide any reasonable notice, doesn't want to rectify some of the defects, doesn't have any quality assurance in place. Both Vendor and Builder doesn't communicate any certain dates, Vendor says to do whatever the owner of the property wants, Builder doesn't respond in writing. Resolution Stage 1.   Beginning of December 2011 - just after settlement. Owner sent defects list to the Vendor as per contract of sale. Vendor forwarded the list to the builder. Builder sends people to the property. They didn't provide any notification in writing, fixed some of the defects quickly and din't rectify majority of them, left the mess after themselves. Stage 2.   Mid January 2012. Owner sent the list of outst...