The Court held that a claim for breach of contract based on failure to pay a contractual debt is not an apportionable claim under s 34(1)(a) of the Civil Liability Act 2002 (NSW), because a failure to take reasonable care is not an element of the plaintiff's cause of action. Applying Rahme v Benjamin & Khoury Pty Ltd [2019] NSWCA 211, the Court confirmed that the character of the claim is determined by the plaintiff's pleaded cause of action, and that allegations of unreasonableness arising only in the defendant's defence or the plaintiff's response to that defence do not transform a simple debt claim into one 'arising from a failure to take reasonable care'. The Court also held that the proposed pleading of concurrent wrongdoers failed to meet the [name withheld] requirements, as two of the four alleged wrongdoers were not identified as particular persons, and the pleading of acts/omissions and causal connection was impermissibly vague and speculative.
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