Grant v Rafferty

The parties to this matter were Grant (the applicant) and Rafferty (the respondent). The dispute concerned an application for leave to commence proceedings out of time following a motor vehicle accident. The application was heard by the Supreme Court of New South Wales.

The central legal issue before the Court of Appeal was whether the applicant should be granted leave to commence proceedings out of time, particularly in light of repeated, unsuccessful applications for the same relief based on substantially the same evidence. The court was required to consider whether the fifth application constituted an abuse of process.

The Court of Appeal found that the applicant had made four previous applications for leave to commence proceedings out of time, all of which had been dismissed. The fifth application was based on the same evidence as the third and fourth applications, and no new material had been presented. The court held that allowing the fifth application to proceed would be an abuse of process, as it represented a persistent and vexatious pursuit of a claim that had already been thoroughly considered and rejected by the court. The principles of res judicata and issue estoppel were implicitly considered in the context of preventing the relitigation of decided matters.

Consequently, the appeal was upheld, and the order granting leave to commence proceedings out of time was set aside.