The Queensland Court of Appeal held that an oral partnership agreement was immediately binding notwithstanding the parties' expressed intention to later reduce it to writing, classifying the arrangement as a Masters v Cameron first-class case where all terms were finalised and the parties intended to be immediately bound, with the written document merely to restate the terms more precisely. The Court rejected the proposition that in commercial contexts there is a 'natural inference' against binding effect absent formal execution, holding that the Masters v Cameron inquiry turns on the intention disclosed by the parties' language or inferred from their conduct, not from the commercial nature of the transaction. The Court also found the trial judge erred in treating the appellant's evidence as internally inconsistent when, read in context, it supported an agreement to proceed immediately with formalisation to follow in due course.
The full text is available to signed-in members, including the 3 later cases that cite this judgment.