Capital Finance Australia Ltd v. Jordan

[2006] QDC 324

[2006] QDC 324

DISTRICT COURT

CIVIL JURISDICTION

JUDGE ROBIN QC

No 150 of 2006

CAPITAL FINANCE AUSTRALIA LIMITED	Plaintiff
and
COLIN LYNNFORD JORDAN	First Defendant

and

ROBYN PAMELA JORDAN                  Second Defendant

SOUTHPORT

..DATE 28/08/2006

ORDER

HIS HONOUR:  This is Capital Finance Australia Limited and Jordan - two Jordans.

This is an application on the papers, under Rule 489 of UCPR, seeking a special order for service on the second defendant. The first defendant has filed a notice of intention to defend and defence, which, if he is successful, may well defeat, or at least substantially impair, the plaintiff's claim. He says it has unilaterally changed commercial arrangements without being entitled to.

It has been found impossible to serve the second defendant, who, one may infer, was married to him, but seems not to be with him any more.  The Court has an affidavit from Mr A.C. Williams, who has conduct of the file in relevant respects for the plaintiff's solicitors, and an affidavit of Mr D.M. Williams, a licensed commercial agent, who is the person who has been seeking to effect service on Ms Jordan, but without success.  He is getting conflicting information as to whether she resides at premises which he has visited on several occasions.

The conflicting information aside, there is advice from the body corporate manager of the relevant residential complex which is called Tallebudgera Cove, rather than, as the application and draft order supplied would have it, "Tallebudgera Cover".  The body corporate manager says the lady resides there and has a letter box.

The days of methodical searches of electoral rolls, land titles offices, motor vehicle registrations, and the like, in an effort to find addresses for elusive defendants appear to be long gone, but, oddly, experience appears to be that such people are never to be found or located by use of those means anyway.

Although the material may be somewhat thin, in circumstances where this is a commercial dispute arising out of a contract, which, it appears, involved the defendants as equal partners in which the first of them is taking an active role in defending his interest in the proceeding, the practical course is to assist the plaintiff.

It is likely, one would think, that the second defendant, even if after a default judgment, will be flushed out in this way one way or another, and have any opportunity which the interests of justice would require that she have to defend her position.

There will be an order in terms of the application filed on the 4th of August 2006, paragraphs 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 7, with the exception that in paragraph 4, "Cover" becomes "Cove".

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