In mid-February 2023, our client, a company that imports perishable goods from the Middle East, discovered that it was unable to make payments from its bank account because a garnishee order had been issued by the District Court.  

Our client then learned that it had been sued many months earlier in relation to its alleged breach of a contract to import dates from Saudi Arabia through the plaintiff.  Our client, which was adamant that it had never been served with the statement of claim, never filed a defence to the statement of claim and, as a result, a default judgment had been made against it for the sum of over $650,000. 

Our client approached us to make an urgent application to have the default judgment and garnishee order set aside.  

We conducted research of the plaintiff which uncovered that the plaintiff was registered about 18 months after the alleged agreement for the sale of the dates. This meant that the plaintiff never had a legal basis to sue our client to begin with.  

We filed an urgent application at the Sydney District Court to set aside the default judgment and garnishee order. 

On 17 February 2023, we successfully obtained ex parte orders staying the garnishee order.  This stopped the $650,000 being taken out of our client’s bank account. 

On 22 February 2023, we successfully argued for the default judgment and garnishee order to be set aside.  This means that our client is no longer in debt to the plaintiff and that our client can now defend the claim.