News

Early payouts under goods leases

Early payouts under goods leases remain unaffected by recent case on penalties In the recent case of Andrews v Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd (2012) 290 ALR 59 (“Andrews”), the High Court decided that provisions in a contract deemed penal in nature would be unenforceable not just upon breach, but irrespective of whether… Read More

Is your company’s ACN (or ABN) on all your public documents?

In Australia every company is issued with an Australian Company Number or “ACN”. The purpose of an ACN is to ensure that a company is properly identified when conducting important aspects of its business. The ACN was introduced in the 1990s in response to the growing realisation that as more and more companies were being… Read More

Restraints on employees

Recently an SME client asked whether the law could help him stop his customers poaching his staff, and his (former) staff poaching his customers. As you can appreciate, these are difficult questions to answer. In Australia, the general position is that restricting a person’s freedom to work is contrary to public policy. Courts don’t like… Read More