Trilogy Corporate Solutions & Anor v Fitzroy Shopfitting & Building Pty Ltd

• The amount claimed by the defendant in the proceedings in the Magistrates' Court is a modest amount which is unlikely to be exceeded by the costs incurred by the parties in that jurisdiction, but will almost certainly be exceeded by the cost of proceedings in this Court. * Over the following two months, Trilogy Solutions was active in that litigation, in that it sought further and better particulars and discovery of documents from the defendant. Those particulars and documents were provided on 31 August.

• Trilogy Solutions did not foreshadow removal of the proceedings until 18 August 2006, one month after it had been notified of a hearing date at Frankston listed for 8 September and two months after its subsidiary commenced proceedings in the District Court NSW. It filed a defence in the Victorian proceedings on 22 August 2006.

• Following the filing of a Statement of Claim in the District Court on 15 June 2006 by CPE Pty Limited, the solicitors acting on behalf of CPE Pty Limited and Trilogy Solutions wrote to the solicitors for the defendants on 6 July 2006, referring to both proceedings in the Magistrates' Court of Victoria and the District Court of New South Wales. An admission was sought from the defendant that the Penrith and Macarthur shop contracts were entered into by CPE Pty Limited, not by Trilogy Solutions, and that, in the event such an admission was made, the Magistrates' Court proceedings should be dismissed. The plaintiffs therefore acknowledged that the substantive issue in both proceedings was the same.

• The amount claimed by CPE Pty Ltd in the District Court is also a modest amount which is more likely to be exceeded by the cost of proceedings in this Court than by the cost of the proceedings in the District Court.
  • The plaintiffs at no stage made an application under s 20 of the Service and Execution of Process Act 1992 (Cth) seeking a stay of the proceedings in the Magistrates' Court on the grounds that a court of another State had jurisdiction to determine all the matters in dispute between the parties and was the appropriate court to determine those matters.
  • CPE Pty Ltd did not seek to be joined as a party to the proceedings in the Magistrates' Court, despite the fact that its legal representative was identical to that of Trilogy Solutions and a cross-claim by CPE Pty Ltd against the defendant was capable of "setting off" the defendant's claim against Trilogy Solutions. On 31 August, the defendant foreshadowed consent to an adjournment of the hearing on 8 September to allow the plaintiffs to adopt that course.
  • In the applications to the Magistrates' Court and this Court on 5 and 7 September respectively, the plaintiffs' attempts to persuade both courts that the interests of justice favoured the consolidation of the proceedings into this Court failed.
  • The unavailability of a critical witness on behalf of the plaintiffs was notified to the defendant after the failure of the application on 5 September, in circumstances which rendered the continuation of the Magistrates' Court proceedings beyond 8 September and, more relevantly, beyond 11 September inevitable.
  • The transfer of the District Court proceedings into this Court and the transfer of the Magistrates' Court proceedings into the Supreme Court of Victoria and then into this Court would involve considerable further delays in the resolution of the litigation, given the unlikelihood that a hearing date could be allocated before mid 2007.
  • The additional cost of the litigation to the defendant would be considerable. In addition to the need for three witnesses and legal representatives to travel from Victoria to NSW for court attendances, the defendant would be obliged to file and serve fresh pleadings and defences and prepare further affidavits.

• The proceedings in the Magistrates' Court are listed for one day's hearing on 8 December 2006. 21 These factors may be said to be more closely associated with doing justice as between the parties than with the interests of justice generally (although they may substantially overlap). Consideration of the interests of justice, including whether inconsistent judgments may arise out of the two sets of proceedings and questions of issue estoppel, call for further analysis to which I will now turn.

The Interests of Justice 22 In the course of the joint judgments of Gleeson CJ, McHugh and Heydon JJ in BHP Billiton Ltd v Schultz [2004] HCA 61, the High Court referred with approval to Street CJ's description of the cross-vesting legislation in Bankinvest AG v Seabrook (1988) 14 NSWLR 711 at 713-714 which was:- In relation to transfer, the common policy reflected in each of the individual enactments is that there must be a judicial determination by the court …… either to transfer or not to transfer the proceedings to one of the other [courts], broadly speaking, upon consideration of the interests of justice … It calls for what I might describe as a "nuts and bolts" management decision as to which court, in the pursuit of the interests of justice, is the more appropriate to hear and determine the substantive dispute. 23 Further, at par 15-16 of the joint judgment, the High Court stated :- The reason why a plaintiff has commenced proceedings in a particular court might, or might not, concern a matter related to the interests of justice. It might simply be that the plaintiff's lawyers have their offices in a particular locality. It is almost invariably the case that a decision as to the court in which an action is commenced is made by the plaintiff's lawyers, and their reasons for making that choice may be various. …. The interests of justice are not the same as the interests of one party, and there may be interests wider than those of either party to be considered. Even so, the interests of the respective parties, which might in some respects be common (as, for example, cost and efficiency), and in other respects conflicting, will arise for consideration. The justice referred to in section 5 is not disembodied, or divorced from practical reality. ……. the capacity of [a court or tribunal] to deal expeditiously with cases has always, and rightly, been regarded as relevant to the interests of justice … On the other hand, there may be conflicting interests of such a kind that justice would not attribute greater weight to one rather than the other. The advantage which a plaintiff might obtain from proceeding in one court might be matched by a corresponding and commensurate disadvantage to a defendant. The reason why a plaintiff commenced proceedings in one court might be the same as the reason why the defendant seeks to have them transferred to another court. In such a case, justice may not dictate a preference for the interests of either party. 24 Whilst I acknowledge that these comments were made in the context of an action for personal injury brought in the Dust Diseases Tribunal of New South Wales (a tribunal established to deal expeditiously with such cases, often involving the imminent death of the plaintiff), which was sought to be removed into this Court and then to the Supreme Court of South Australia, they are nonetheless generally applicable to the circumstances of the instant case. 25 The Magistrates' Court in Victoria has the capacity to deal with the substance of the dispute between the plaintiffs and the defendant as early as 8 December 2006, at considerably less cost to all parties than removal of those proceedings will entail. Both the narrow focus of the dispute and the amount claimed by Fitzroy Shopfitting against Trilogy Solutions amply fall within the jurisdiction of that court. The plaintiffs have not identified any relevant prejudice or disadvantage occasioned to them (leaving to one side for present purposes the issue of inconsistent judgments) by the continuation of the proceedings in the Magistrates Court. There is no impediment, as far as I am aware, to the participation of both plaintiffs in the proceedings commenced by the defendant, and none was identified by the plaintiffs when the defendant offered to consent to a brief adjournment of the hearing on 8 September 2006 to allow that to occur. Moreover, that offer is still open. 26 Nor am I persuaded that the prospect of inconsistent judgments as between the Magistrates' Court in Victoria and the District Court in New South Wales will be realised. The fact that CPE Pty Limited is not a party to the proceedings in Victoria does not prevent reliance by it upon the case advanced by Fitzroy Shopfitting in those proceedings, for the purposes of CPE's claims in the District Court : see Rippon v Chilcotin Pty Limited & Ors. (2001) 53 NSWLR 198 at 201-202 ; [2001] NSWCA 142. It would be an abuse of process should the plaintiffs or the defendant seek to re-litigate an issue central to the proceedings in Victoria, in the proceedings in New South Wales or in any other court. 27 Substantially for the reasons set out at par 20 above, the plaintiffs have not discharged the onus upon them to persuade me to exercise my broad discretion under s 140 of the Civil Procedure Act to remove the proceedings in the District Court into this Court. It follows that there are no proceedings pending in this Court which would enliven the provisions under the cross vesting legislation. If I am wrong in this regard, I am nonetheless unpersuaded that there are grounds upon which the proceedings in the Victorian Magistrates' Court ought be removed to the Victorian Supreme Court pursuant to s 8 of the Jurisdiction of Courts (Cross Vesting) Act 1987 Vic. That power is also discretionary and the same considerations to which I have referred in par 20 justify a refusal to exercise that discretion. 28 For completeness, I am also of the view that this Court is not the more appropriate forum, nor do the interests of justice warrant the removal of the proceedings from the Supreme Court in Victoria to this Court, pursuant to s 5 of the cross vesting legislation. Accordingly, I would refuse the orders sought in the summons. 29 The formal orders I make are :-

1. The summons is dismissed.
2. The plaintiffs are to pay the defendant's costs in these proceedings.

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