The retirement village, now derelict, in Patterson Lakes, 35km southeast of Victoria,was closed due to safety concerns in 2017, with the 16 residents owed thousands of dollars from in-going contributions.
Consumer Affairs Victoria (CAV) posted an update on its action against Berkeley Living Retirement Village on Wednesday, 25 September, revealing that its Victorian Supreme Court case seeking to recover the contributions paid by the former residents is now bound for the High Court of Australia after support from the Victorian Attorney-General Jaclyn Symes.
CAV successfully took former owner Stephen Snowden to court over the debacle in 2018 and he was found to have breached the Retirement Villages Act 1986 by being involved in managing a retirement village while he was insolvent, and before five years had passed after a conviction for an offence involving fraud or dishonesty, punishable with a prison term of not less than three months.
After reforms to Victoria’s retirement villages laws, CAV filed a legal application in the Supreme Court of Victoria last year, seeking to sell all the retirement village land and use the sale funds to ensure residents are repaid what they are owed.
"Last month at our request, the Victorian Attorney-General applied to take the matter to the High Court of Australia. The Attorney-General is seeking a ruling that would give the Supreme Court of Victoria full powers to make all the orders we are seeking in the case, including the sale of all the individual lots of land that make up the former village," said the State Government agency.
"The reason this is important is that some of the lots of land are now owned by the Commonwealth or the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, because the previous owners were companies that are now deregistered under federal law. This means that the Supreme Court must consider making orders that would cover the Commonwealth government – this raises constitutional issues, that the Attorney-General’s application to the High Court can help resolve."As soon as the High Court application is resolved, we will take any next steps available to us to finalise our Supreme Court case in the public interest."
