Australia, Jan. 17 -- New South Wales Land and Environment Court issued text of the following judgement Dec. 18:

1. These proceedings were commenced by summonses filed on 22 April 2022.

2. By motion filed on the afternoon of 16 December 2024, the plaintiff seeks leave to reopen two sets of proceedings (the proceedings) heard on 25 September 2024 (the substantive hearing), in which he sought leave to appeal from consent orders made by the Appeal Panel (the Appeal Panel) of the New South Wales Civil and Administrative Tribunal (the Tribunal) and also sought judicial review of those consent orders, and also of a range of other decisions of the Tribunal and Appeal Panel, details of which are set out in my judgment in the substantive proceedings, Shapkin v Lorenzato [2024] NSWSC 1620, with which this judgment should be read.

3. This is the plaintiff's second application for leave to reopen the proceedings.

4. The application was heard on 17 December 2024. At the conclusion of that hearing I made orders dismissing the application. These are my reasons for making those orders.

Context

5. The context for this application is that, by email to my chambers of 23 September 2024, the plaintiff confirmed that he was "ready" for the proceedings to be heard. He did not seek an adjournment at the commencement of the substantive hearing on 25 September 2024, but did so at the end of his reply submissions, at around 4.30pm. Shortly before that he had sought leave to rely upon further evidence, which leave was refused. By way of further context, at the commencement of the substantive hearing the plaintiff tendered affidavits from himself affirmed 15 March 2023, 24 April 2024 and 8 May 2024, together with exhibits to these affidavits and these were provisionally admitted subject to any submissions that may be made by counsel for the Attorney General of New South Wales (the Attorney General), appearing as amicus curiae in these proceedings, who had not seen these documents. The exhibits to these affidavits included full transcripts of a number of Tribunal hearings, and correspondence between the parties relevant to the issues in the substantive proceedings, but after I indicated to the plaintiff that there were matters in that evidence that appeared to be significant and which he had not dealt with in his submissions, he rescinded the tender. At the hearing on 25 September 2024, he thus only tendered the court book, which clearly did not include all material before the Tribunal or Appeal Panel for the purpose of the various decisions and orders challenged by the plaintiff in the proceedings, nor did it include complete transcripts of key hearings which resulted in the various decisions and orders challenged by the plaintiff in the proceedings.

6. During the hearing on 25 September 2024, on a number of occasions I explained to the plaintiff that, as the onus of proof rested on him, it was for him to satisfy the Court as to the matters upon which he relied. I also explained that photocopies of the two key documents that he relied upon (described in my judgment in the substantive proceedings as the January and February 2022 Documents) were not sufficient, in my provisional view, to establish that the residential tenancy agreement dated June 2021 that he had entered into with the defendant had been terminated. It was also made clear to the plaintiff that there was no evidence before the Court as to what was put to the Tribunal about the January and February 2022 Documents, in particular because as regards one of the Tribunal hearings, on 22 February 2022, the plaintiff had tendered only two pages of the transcript of the proceedings (although the full transcript had been part of the tender that the plaintiff had rescinded during the hearing on 25 September 2024).

*Rest of the document can be viewed at: (https://www.caselaw.nsw.gov.au/decision/193ce5dd39c77eb40aae93f4)

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