Enforcement of Third Party Rights in Queensland Pursuant to Property Law Act 1974 (Qld), s55
Abstract
Twentyfive years ago the common law rule of privity of contract was largely abolished in Queensland by the enactment of Property Law Act 1974 (Qld), s55. Subsection 1 provides that:
A promisor who, for a valuable consideration moving from the promisee, promises to do or refrain from doing an act or acts for the benefit of a beneficiary shall, upon acceptance by the beneficiary, be subject to a duty enforceable by the beneficiary to perform that promise.
Any interpretation of the section, including the construction of terms such as "promisor", "beneficiary", "promise", "acceptance" and available defences, is to be gleaned from a handful of reported cases (including obiter in a High Court decision) and a number of unreported Queensland decisions. In many of these decisions the section was called upon by way of alternative argument rather than being the main focus of the action.
Authors who publish with this journal retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY) that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
Articles in this journal are published under the Creative Commons Attribution Licence (CC-BY). This is to achieve more legal certainty about what readers can do with published articles, and thus a wider dissemination and archiving, which in turn makes publishing with this journal more valuable for authors.
