Civil litigation and commercial disputes

Which forum your dispute belongs in

Getting this wrong is expensive. Filing in a court above your claim value exposes you to costs. Filing in QCAT when you needed a court can mean you cannot recover legal costs at all.

QCAT also has its own non-monetary jurisdictions, including domestic building disputes under the Queensland Building and Construction Commission Act 1991 (Qld), regardless of the amount involved.

Debt recovery, in the order it actually happens

Debt recovery is a process, and skipping steps costs money.

1. Check the limitation period. Six years from when the cause of action accrued for a simple contract debt under section 10 of the Limitation of Actions Act 1974. A part payment or written acknowledgment can restart it.
2. Letter of demand. Cheap, and it resolves a meaningful share of disputes. It also creates the record a court will want to see.
3. For a corporate debtor, consider a statutory demand under section 459E of the Corporations Act 2001 (Cth) where the debt is genuinely undisputed. It is a blunt instrument and it backfires badly on a disputed debt.
4. File a claim in the right forum. QCAT minor debt up to $25,000, otherwise the Magistrates, District or Supreme Court.
5. Enforce the judgment. A judgment is not money. Enforcement hearings, enforcement warrants against goods, redirection of earnings and charging orders are separate steps under the Uniform Civil Procedure Rules 1999.

Before any of it, find out whether the debtor can actually pay. A judgment against an empty company is a very expensive piece of paper.

Contract and commercial disputes

The disputes we see most often between Queensland businesses follow a small number of patterns.

• Breach of a supply, services or distribution agreement, where the argument is usually about what the contract actually said rather than what was done.
• Business sale disputes, including warranty claims, undisclosed liabilities and earn-out arguments after settlement.
• Shareholder and partner disputes, including oppression claims under section 232 of the Corporations Act 2001 (Cth) and deadlock in a two-director company.
• Restraint of trade and confidential information, where the practical question is whether an injunction is realistically available and worth the cost.
• Misleading and deceptive conduct under section 18 of the Australian Consumer Law, which frequently sits alongside a contract claim and has its own limitation rules.

Building and construction disputes

Domestic building disputes in Queensland run on a different track to ordinary contract claims.

Defective or incomplete residential work is usually taken first to the Queensland Building and Construction Commission, which can inspect and issue a direction to rectify. That process is free and it often produces a better result than litigation.

If it does not resolve, a domestic building dispute goes to QCAT under the Queensland Building and Construction Commission Act 1991 (Qld), and the tribunal can hear it regardless of value. Commercial construction disputes and payment claims under the Building Industry Fairness (Security of Payment) Act 2017 (Qld) run separately again, with very short response timeframes that are easy to miss.