Australian Meat Industry Employees Union v Mudginberri Station Pty Ltd

The Federal Court of Australia heard a notice of motion filed by the Australasian Meat Industry Employees Union and four other applicants against Mudginberri Station Pty Ltd. The applicants sought to vacate the hearing date, obtain further discovery, and be granted leave to administer interrogatories outside the time limit. The respondents contested these applications, arguing that the applicants had delayed in seeking further discovery and had failed to request extensions for the interrogatories in a timely manner. The case was presided over by Justice Morling, who addressed each of the applicants' requests.

The court first considered the request to vacate the hearing date. Justice Morling agreed that the matter should be heard as soon as possible but recognised that the applicants had not raised any objections to the original hearing date until later. The court vacated the original date and proposed to set a new date at a later time.

Regarding the request for further discovery, Justice Morling noted that the applicants had waited until after the appeal against an earlier decision had been heard before raising concerns about the adequacy of the respondents' discovery. The court found that the applicants should have raised their concerns sooner, but the respondents were cooperative in providing additional documents and agreeing to continue searching for the missing ones. The court ordered the respondents to file a further affidavit verifying the produced documents and instructed them to complete their search for the missing documents as quickly as possible.

Lastly, the court considered the request to extend the time for administering interrogatories. Justice Morling expressed concern that the applicants could have formulated their interrogatories earlier and should have sought an extension of time before the original deadline. However, the court took into account that the applicants had some basis for believing that the case might not proceed to a hearing on the merits due to the pending appeal. The court extended the time for serving interrogatories to 5 pm on 27 June and adjusted the time for hearing the matter to 2 pm on 2 July.

The court reserved the question of costs for the trial judge to decide but invited the parties to address the court on the matter if they wished. The court made an order in terms of the notice of motion and fixed the return of subpoenas for Monday, 7 July. The matter was fixed for hearing on 14 July 1986.