90 It should also be noted that reliance was placed for the applicants upon the decision of the High Court in United Dominions Corporation Limited v Brian Proprietary Limited & Ors (1984) 157 CLR 1, as to the nature of a joint venture. It is helpful to consider what was there said. At pp10-11, Mason, Brennan and Deane JJ, observed:
'The term "joint venture" is not a technical one with a settled common law meaning. As a matter of ordinary language, it connotes an association of persons for the purposes of a particular trading, commercial, mining or other financial undertaking or endeavour with a view to mutual profit, with each participant usually (but not necessarily) contributing money, property or skill. Such a joint venture (or, under Scots' law, "adventure") will often be a partnership. The term is, however, apposite to refer to a joint undertaking or activity carried out through a medium other than a partnership: such as a company, a trust, an agency or joint ownership. The borderline between what can properly be described as a "joint venture" and what should more properly be seen as no more than a simple contractual relationship may on occasion be blurred. Thus, where one party contributes only money or other property, it may sometimes be difficult to determine whether a relationship is a joint venture in which both parties are entitled to a share of profits or a simple contract of loan or a lease under which the interest or rent payable to the party providing the money or property is determined by reference to the profits made by the other. One would need a more confined and precise notion of what constitutes a "joint venture" than that which the term bears as a matter of ordinary language before it could be said by way of general proposition that the relationship between joint venturers is necessarily a fiduciary one (but cf. per Cardozo C.J., Meinhard v. Salmon (1928) 249 N.Y. 458, at p.462; 164 NE 545, at p 546). The most that can be said is that whether or not the relationship between joint venturers is fiduciary will depend upon the form which the particular joint venture takes and upon the content of the obligations which the parties to it have undertaken. If the joint venture takes the form of a partnership, the fact that it is confined to one joint undertaking as distinct from being a continuing relationship will not prevent the relationship between the joint venturers from being a fiduciary one. In such a case, the joint venturers will be under fiduciary duties to one another, including fiduciary duties in relation to property the subject of the joint venture, which are the ordinary incidents of the partnership relationship, though those fiduciary duties will be moulded to the character of the particular relationship (see, generally, Birtchnell v. Equity Trustees, Executors and Agency Co. Ltd . (1929) 42 CLR 384, at pp 407-409).'