The new Supreme Court Practice Direction 1 of 2023 aims to improve the conduct of commercial litigation by an enhanced Commercial List from 30 January 2023.
The practice direction is supported by Notes about the conduct of the Commercial List, draft directions, expert evidence, and electronic filing.
Requests to place matters falling within the practice direction on the List should be made by the online Commercial List Request Form.
The practice direction applies to existing and future proceedings on the Commercial List commenced in, or transferred to, the Brisbane Registry. All matters which are currently on the Supervised List and which come within the definition of a commercial matter will be transferred to the Commercial List.
A commercial matter filed in another region will be subject to case management as appropriate in that region.
The major changes to the Commercial List include:
- Justice Applegarth is the Commercial List Principal Judge. He will assign matters to be managed by a particular Commercial List Judge who will then go on to hear that matter.
- The Commercial List Judges are Justices Applegarth, Brown, Bradley, Freeburn, Kelly, Cooper and Hindman. All commercial matters of whatever hearing length will be dealt with by those judges.
- The Commercial List will apply to short and long trials of matters that are placed on the List.
- A Fast Track process will apply to urgent matters.
All judges referred to above will continue to sit in all other jurisdictions of the court.
The Supreme Court has extended its sincere thanks to all practitioners who attended recent information sessions and provided feedback on the draft practice direction. The Senior Judge Administrator will establish a user group of practitioners to consult about the Commercial List and further improvements to it.
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