Industrial Rollformers Pty Ltd v Ingersoll-Rand (Australia) Pty Ltd (No 2)

Industrial Rollformers Pty Ltd (the appellants) sought to vary orders made by the court on 24 April 2001, following an appeal that had previously failed. The dispute concerned declarations made in the original judgment, and the appellants sought to amend these declarations through a notice of motion filed after the appeal judgment. The matter came before Priestley, Meagher and Giles JJA of the Court of Appeal of New South Wales.

The primary legal issue was whether the court should grant the appellants' application to vary the existing orders. This involved considering whether an application to vary a judgment after an appeal has been dismissed should be treated by analogy with an application to reopen a judgment, and if so, on what grounds such an application might succeed. A further issue was whether the appellants had demonstrated sufficient grounds for the specific variations they sought to the declarations.

The court reasoned that an application to vary a judgment after an appeal has been dismissed should be refused unless exceptional circumstances are shown, akin to the principles governing the reopening of judgments. The court found that the undertaking given by the appellants was part of an agreed interlocutory arrangement, and there was no basis to strike down this agreement. Furthermore, the court determined that the appellants had not established any grounds for the specific variations they sought to the declarations.

Consequently, the court ordered that the orders made on 24 April 2001 be varied by adding specific sub-paragraphs to order 2, which involved amendments to declarations 2, 5, 9, 10, and 16. The notice of motion was otherwise dismissed, and the appellants were ordered to pay the respondent's costs of the notice of motion.