max, I admire your tenacity in this. But if you only lost $55,000 on CDU, then I suggest that you chalk it up to experience and let it go.
A brother-in-law is defending a totally baseless claim from a customer, who thinks that it has sufficient funds to win merely by bankrupting my b-i-l and his business partner with their (that is, my b-i-l and his partner's) own legal costs. They have successfully used such bully tactics before. A critical miscalculation was not knowing my b-i-l's financial position. At the last pre-trial meeting the customer snarled across the table that they would have the b-i-l's house!
Rather beautifully, it looks like the plaintiff is likely to bankrupt itself, partly because they are still using solicitors and a top barrister (at $20,000/day for his specialist services) whilst, on his own legal teams advice, b-i-l is defending the case himself with only a barrister at basic rates of $2,000 to $4,000/day.
Naturally it has taken only a couple of years to get this far, with the trial possibly next February.
Now, that is all with clearly defined parties, and a crystal clear issue to be decided. My bet is you'll have spent another $55,000 before you've even determined who you need to go after ...... and if it is who you think it is, their pockets are effectively infinite. It will never be resolved before Rocklands starts mining! And the other side will probably request (and be granted) that you put up $x00,000 as surety that their costs will be met should they win what they will undoubtably claim is a frivolous case.
CDU Price at posting:
$4.14 Sentiment: None Disclosure: Not Held
