Legal (Page 10)

Legal articles relating to legislation, disputes and civil suits

Contributed By: Hynes Legal on

We don’t like being negative nellies, but sometimes we do need to talk about the things that go wrong in these newsletters. Alan Greenspan (the then Federal Reserve Chairman in the USA) coined the famous phrase ‘irrational exuberance’ in relation to the dot-com bubble of the late 1990’s, but it could apply to any boom since (and before – even back to the tulip boom of the 1600’s.) If you were to Australianise that phrase it would be along the lines of something being ‘too silly for words’. It is not for a lawyer to talk about risk when it comes to valuations / asset pricing asRead More →

Body corporate insurance is arguably the most important aspect of building management, but when it comes to using it, it can be difficult to understand what’s covered and what’s not. The basic principle of strata insurance is to provide cover for common property and the building’s structure. This means that the body corporate is responsible for all common areas and the structural elements of the building. Owners are typically responsible for the internal contents of their unit. There are some circumstances where the body corporate can provide cover for internal fixtures if they are classified as part of the building’s structure. For example, if an owner’s hot water systemRead More →

Contributed By: Hynes Legal on

Everyone (probably) knows that there are a maximum of seven voting committee positions for a committee formed under the Body Corporate and Community Management Act 1997 (BCCM Act).  These are the chairperson, the secretary, the treasurer and then four ‘ordinary’ committee positions. The question that sometimes arises is what each of these people are responsible for. It is quite interesting (and perhaps that’s just the lawyer in us) in terms of what most committees fall back to as a default position as against what the BCCM Act actually prescribes. Those default positions are not necessarily the legislative requirements. The first distinction to draw is between executive committeeRead More →

Contributed By: Hynes Legal on

We get an enormous range of questions on how bodies corporate go about their daily business. One of the most broadly asked questions is how a body corporate makes a decision. A body corporate is a creature of statute. The Body Corporate and Community Management Act 1997 (BCCM Act) sets out the rules about how it must operate. A single person (chairperson or otherwise) can never make a decision on a body corporate matter (leaving aside delegated authority which is far too complex to discuss here and really only applies to BUGTA regulated schemes). This will be a bit of a back to basics newsletter for strata managers (who probably knowRead More →

Contributed By: Hynes Legal on

Alan Greenspan (the then Federal Reserve Chairman in the USA) coined the famous phrase ‘irrational exuberance’ in relation to the dot-com bubble of the late 1990’s, but it could apply to any boom since (and before – even back to the tulip boom of the $1600’s.) For mine, if you were to Australianise that phrase it would be along the lines of something being ‘too silly for words’. It is not for a lawyer to talk about risk when it comes to valuations / asset pricing as Greenspan could, but it is certainly within our ambit to talk about legal risk.We think a very interestingRead More →

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