The weird and wonderful claims the Courts are presented with.

On 10 November 2016 the High Court unanimously dismissed Clive Palmer’s challenge to the constitutional validity of Section 596A of the Corporations Act (liquidator’s power to publicly examine and compel the production of documents).

Palmer, who once declared himself Australia’s next prime minister, halted a liquidator’s examination of him regarding the collapse of Queensland Nickel with his application to the High Court to have the examination laws (which he said were akin to laws in Nazi Germany) declared unconstitutional.

Palmer said his challenge to public examination laws will “change the way we live” and that he was acting not out of self-interest but on behalf of all Australians.

In addition to the liquidators, the attorneys-general of Queensland, Victoria, South Australia, and their federal counterpart, all objected to the challenge.

Having lost his High Court bid, Palmer will now have to return to the Federal Court to continue answering questions regarding Queensland Nickel.

In September 2016 during a liquidator’s examination into the failure of the Sydney-based stockbroking firm BBY, the NSW Supreme Court heard evidence that the executive chairman Glenn Rosewall (son of the great tennis player, Ken Rosewall) had sought advice regarding the company from a self-proclaimed psychic and vibrational healer.

The Court was presented with emails and text messages between Rosewall and the psychic regarding the company. Rosewall appears to have asked the psychic to provide information on when certain stock prices might rise or when the company might receive a “significant windfall”.

Lawyers for the liquidators read to the Court an email from the psychic to Rosewall which stated that “wealth clues in BBY’s astrological charts” indicated the company “needed to curtail spending” because of a “tied aspect between Athena and Jupiter”.

Rosewall had also sought the psychic’s assistance with the firm’s budgets and forecasts. Rosewall told the Court he viewed the psychic’s feedback on the company’s budget forecasts as “just another input” on par with input sought from the managers of different sections of the business.

December 2016