The Federal Court held that a landlord validly terminated agreements for lease and related leases where the condition precedent requiring agreement on the scope and design of the tenant's plans and specifications had not been satisfied by the contractual deadline. The Court rejected the tenant's estoppel argument, finding that an ambiguous email exchange was intended only as confirmation that the landlord's (not the tenant's) plans and specifications had been approved, and therefore no common assumption existed that the agreements had become unconditional. The Court also found that the tenant entities engaged in misleading or deceptive conduct by failing to disclose liquor licence conditions prohibiting a key associate from involvement in licensed premises, but declined to grant the cross-claimant's sought declarations that the agreements were void ab initio given the agreements had already been validly terminated.
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