Dear Colleagues;

Despite it being only a trial decision, the judgment in Helou v Nguyen (with Addendum) [2014] NSWSC 22 (5 Feb 2014) http://www.caselaw.nsw.gov.au/action/PJUDG?jgmtid=169487  contains so many interesting issues that I thought colleagues would like to hear about it. In short, one family had amassed a large pile of cash (over $450,000) which they kept in the roof space of a house they owned. A neighbour discovered this through befriending a son of the family, stole the cash, and subsequently used it to buy some property for he and his wife. The judgment contains an interesting discussion on the medieval law of usury and its later developments (sparked by the fact that the storing of the cash was said to be motivated by a religious conviction that interest should not be paid on money so it could not be kept in a bank), on tracing, on the relationship between an action for conversion and moneys had and received, the difference between a compensatory and gain-based remedy, and discussion of the liability of joint tenants for the wrong of one of them (the wife of the main defendant claiming that she did not know about the illicit source of the funds.)

Regards

Neil