Australian actress Toni Collette and her musician husband have lost a high-profile legal stoush over the failed purchase of a Sdyney house, and have to pay more than A$800,000 (NZ$957,000) in damages.
In the NSW Supreme Court on Friday, Acting Justice William Windeyer found in favour of Industrie clothing label founder, Susan Kelly, and ordered Collette and her husband, David Galafassi, pay A$814,907 (NZ$975,000), plus legal costs.
The court heard Collette and her husband agreed to buy Susan and Nick Kelly’s terrace, for A$6.35 million (NZ$7.6m) in September 2011, and the deal was due to close on December 30.
But the couple’s lawyers wrote to the Kellys’ legal team to say they could not proceed with the purchase, and had been unable to sell their house on Bronte Road.
The court heard Collette and Galafassi had also agreed to buy another property in Sydney.
The Kellys eventually sold the Paddington property for A$5.5m (NZ$6.5m) and sued the couple for the difference, plus interest and land tax.
Collette and Galafassi’s defence, filed to the court, alleged Mrs Kelly did not make a reasonable effort to get the best price for the Paddington property after their deal fell through, because she didn’t put the house up for auction nor advertise it online or in newspapers.
But Acting Justice Windeyer found otherwise.
“I consider [Mrs Kelly] made reasonable efforts to minimise her loss and took reasonable care in selling the property at the price she did,” he said in his judgment.
The court case revealed several emails between Collette and people involved in the property negotiation.
Writing to McGrath real estate agent Ben Collier in January last year, Collette said one of his colleagues had “enticed” her and her musician husband David Galafassi with a maximum price of more than A$4m ($NZ4.8) for their Bronte cottage, but then quoted a figure of A$3.5m ($NZ4.2m) in the press.
In an email before the NSW Supreme Court the actor told Collier the couple was angry about his female colleague’s actions.
“She broke all kinds of confidentiality agreements. You know that I am an extremely private person and am never one to get in bed with the media,” Collette wrote.
“She even allowed press into the actual auction! Outrageous. She single-handedly made me the poster child for the fabricated state of the housing market. As you can tell we are not just upset but quite angry about this.”
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Collette then wrote that it didn’t change the fact the couple was unable to proceed with the purchase of “beautiful Stewart St”.
“Please apologise a million times to the vendors. We know it would be horrible to be in that position but there is nothing we can do about it at this time.”
– Sydney Morning Herald
