Australia, Sept. 8 -- New South Wales Land and Environment Court issued text of the following judgement on Aug. 8:

1. BELL CJ: I have had the benefit of reading the reasons of Payne JA for dismissing the appeal. I agree with those reasons and the orders his Honour proposes.

2. I wish to add some brief observations to what his Honour has said at [49] below in relation to the respondent's use of Generative AI in the preparation of her oral submissions in this Court. In so doing, I make no personal criticism of the respondent who was self-represented and doing her best to defend her interests. But the respondent's use of Generative AI in the present case highlights the dilemma presented by the availability of that technology, especially where it is used by a person without legal training or otherwise not familiar with or unable to discern both the relevance and accuracy of what Generative AI may produce.

3. The respondent appeared remotely from Queensland by AVL and plainly was reading from a screen when delivering her oral submissions. The respondent was admirably candid with the Court in relation to her use of AI in the preparation of what she described as her speech for the purposes of the appeal hearing:

"BELL CJ: Ms Costaras, are you, and I don't mean this critically, I just want to inquire, are you reading from some script or some slides prepared by artificial intelligence?

RESPONDENT: Yes, your Honour, I did get the help of AI."

The respondent later indicated that she had "uploaded all the documentation".

4. Some of the respondent's oral submissions were intelligible and engaged with the matters raised on the appeal. Many of them, however, did not. It is useful to give some examples to highlight the serious shortcomings of the use of Generative AI at least by a person who is not capable of either checking the accuracy or veracity or relevance of what has been generated. Again, I emphasise that in setting out the following passages, I am not being personally critical of the respondent who was doing her best to represent herself.

5. The following is an extract from the respondent's oral submissions as recorded in the appeal transcript:

"The Scott Street property was intended to continue this model. The respondent sourced it, undertook arrangements for trades and quotes and immediately began preparations for the renovations before being locked out by the appellant he went to rescind counter restitution of the earlier joint endeavours. The defence also destroys a plaintiff's claim to an equitable proprietary interest in property, to which the defendant has legal title, Nisbet and Potts' Contract "The rationale of the application of good faith purchase in equity is to determine priority of title between competing claimants to property." Wheatley v Bell.

Moreover, as Lord Goff explained in Lipkin v Gorman, sorry, in Lipkin Gorman v Karpnale, the requirements which must be proved in order to establish the former also differ because change of position will only avail a defendant to the extent that his position has been changed. Whereas if a bona fide purchase is involved, no inquiry is made in most cases into the adequacy of the consideration."

6. I make the following observations. First, the expression "he went to rescind counter restitution of the earlier joint endeavours" does not, on its face, make sense although what was intended may be capable of being inferred in the context of the parties' dispute. But the introduction of notions of counter-restitution and restitution and the reference to Lipkin Gorman v Karpnale [1991] 2 AC 548 and change of position had absolutely nothing to do with the legal issues in the case.

*Rest of the document can be viewed at: (https://www.caselaw.nsw.gov.au/decision/19882d91516a00f487b15f20)

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