Fortuna Seafoods P/L as trustee for The Rowley Family Trust v The Ship “Eternal Wind”

[2005] QCA 405

Queensland Court of Appeal

Built by Barristers,
For Australian Law.

See how it works

Interrogate

Catchwords

1. Tort Law
2. › Negligence
3. › Duty of Care
4. › Pure Economic Loss
5. › Relational economic loss
6. › Damage to third party's property causing economic loss to related entity
7. › Whether duty of care owed to closely related company in vertically integrated commercial operation
8. › Whether defendant had means of knowledge of ascertainable determinate class
9. › Caltex Oil (Australia) Pty Ltd v The Dredge 'Willemstad' (1976) 136 CLR 529
10. › Perre v Apand Pty Ltd (1999) 198 CLR 180
1. Tort Law
2. › Negligence
3. › Duty of Care
4. › Pure Economic Loss
5. › Ascertainable class
6. › Means of knowledge
7. › Whether inference of means of knowledge available where no contradictory evidence led by defendant
1. Practice and Procedure
2. › Costs
3. › Scale of costs
4. › Whether Supreme Court scale appropriate where judgment within District Court jurisdiction
5. › Action originally one of related proceedings within Supreme Court jurisdiction

Quick Take

A duty of care for pure economic loss may be owed to a closely related company in a vertically integrated commercial operation where the defendant had the means of knowledge that such integrated structures were common in the relevant industry. The earlier Queensland authority of Christopher v Fiji Gas is no longer of real assistance following Perre v Apand. The question of whether the class is sufficiently ascertainable and determinate remains fact-dependent, with the 2-1 split in this case illustrating the difficulty of the inquiry.