The Court dismissed all three equitable claims (joint endeavour constructive trust, common intention constructive trust, and proprietary estoppel) by a son who performed extensive building works on his mother's property over approximately 36 years while living there rent-free. On the joint endeavour claim, the Court held no joint endeavour was established on the evidence, and alternatively that the son's acts of domestic violence — including a threat to kill, which led to a five-year family intervention order — constituted attributable blame sufficient to defeat the claim, distinguishing cases where family relationships merely 'soured through incremental events'. On the common intention constructive trust, the Court found no intention to confer a beneficial interest was established, and alternatively that any equity was not an equitable fraud given the son's decades of rent-free occupation and insufficient evidence of the value of his contributions. On proprietary estoppel, the Court found no promise was made, and alternatively that any equity had been amortised through decades of rent-free occupation, applying Sledmore v Dalby and Milling v Hardie. The Court also held the clean hands doctrine independently barred relief, finding the son's domestic violence bore an immediate and necessary relation to the equity sued for because his exclusion from the property — the very basis of his claim — resulted from his own reprehensible conduct.
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