The Court held that correspondence between solicitors recording an 'agreement in principle' to settle proceedings, expressly stated to be 'subject to formal resolutions being passed at a meeting of the Owners Corporation' and contemplating execution of a settlement deed requiring approval at a general meeting, did not give rise to a binding settlement agreement. The exchange fell within the third Masters v Cameron category where the parties did not intend to make a concluded bargain until formal approval and execution of the deed. The Court also held that while an executive committee could potentially approve a settlement without a general meeting under s 21 of the Strata Schemes Management Act 1996 (NSW), the parties' own correspondence consistently treated the settlement as conditional on such approval, and subsequent references to an 'in principle settlement' were inconsistent with the existence of a binding agreement.
The full text is available to signed-in members, including the 6 later cases that cite this judgment.