Stapler Pty Ltd in its capacity as trustee for the Stapler Trust No. 1 v Raheb Property Holdings Pty Ltd in its own right and as trustee for the Robin Raheb Family Trust

The Court dismissed an application by the borrower and guarantor to vacate a final hearing listed for the following day, finding no satisfactory explanation for the delay where the defendants' solicitor had consented to guillotine orders and circulated a draft defence months earlier but never filed it, and where the proposed defences (unfair contract terms, Contracts Review Act, unconscionability, National Credit Code) lacked merit on the evidence which showed the loan was entered into due to pre-existing financial desperation unconnected with the lender's conduct. The Court held that a bankrupt guarantor had no standing to raise defences where her claims had vested in her bankruptcy trustee under s 58(1) of the Bankruptcy Act 1966, and the trustee did not seek to defend. The Court ordered judicial sale of the property to enforce the plaintiff's equitable charge arising from an unregistered mortgage, with the plaintiff to conduct the sale and proceeds to be distributed in accordance with priority principles.