Civil Law (Wrongs) Act: ACT Financial Claims

Locate the ACT Act and the Claim It Governs

Use the ACT Legislation Register’s entry for the Civil Law (Wrongs) Act 2002 to identify the authorised legislation. The register provides the compilation, point-in-time versions and law history. Record the version relevant to the alleged conduct and any applicable transitional rules in your legal issue note.

This is the ACT Act, numbered A2002-40. Keep its provisions separate from similarly named civil liability legislation in other jurisdictions. An ACT address alone does not settle the law governing a transaction involving parties elsewhere.

Before selecting sections, write down who says they suffered loss, who allegedly owed them a duty and what that duty required. Identify the act or omission, the relevant period and the relief sought. Separate each pleaded basis, including negligence, contract and any statutory claim.

Every commercial dispute does not arise under this Act. The civil-law guide explains the broader private-rights and forum distinctions. For this task, the useful starting document is a short allegation: which defendant failed to take which precaution, for which claimant, against which financial risk?

Check Application, Exclusions and Liability Issues

Check Chapter 4’s application before applying its negligence tests. Section 40 includes economic loss within harm. Section 41 covers damages for harm resulting from negligence across different causes of action, with an exclusion for claims under the Workers Compensation Act 1951.

For pure economic loss, identify the common-law basis for the alleged duty. A foreseeable financial loss alone does not establish that duty. In Brookfield Multiplex Ltd v Owners Corporation Strata Plan 61288 [2014] HCA 36, the High Court examined contractual protections and vulnerability when rejecting the asserted duty. That building dispute supplies principles for analysis, not a determination of an adviser’s obligations in another matter.

Liability Issue Table

Use the authorised Act alongside the authority relevant to the pleaded relationship. Add the controlling decision and pinpoint for each contested proposition in the matter’s working table.

Section 43 requires a foreseeable risk that was not insignificant and precautions a reasonable person would take. Its assessment includes probability, seriousness, precaution burden and social utility. Section 44 also addresses alternative precautions and later preventive action.

Do not carry personal-injury procedures or damages limits into a financial-advice claim without examining their application provisions. Review exclusions and any other relevant statutory regime separately. Keep limitation questions on the legal team’s chronology before commissioning extensive analysis.

ACT professional-negligence authority also requires attention to the actual retainer. In Manny v David Lardner Lawyers (No 4) [2024] ACTCA 12, the Court of Appeal examined the retained services and alleged obligations beyond them. Contractual and tortious obligations were not treated as necessarily coextensive. The first-instance reasons show the separate treatment of instructions, breach and causation. An adviser’s duties require analysis of that adviser’s relationship and services.

Separate Liability From Financial Quantum

Liability asks whether the defendant must answer for the loss. Quantum asks how much recoverable loss the evidence supports. Keep duty, breach, causation and loss as separate entries in the brief, with different documents supporting each answer.

An accountant can reconstruct payments and test financial assumptions. The legal team defines the duty alleged and the legal basis for recoverability. Expert evidence about professional standards may also be needed, depending on the disputed conduct and the expert’s field.

Consider a fictional financial-advice allegation. A company says an adviser recommended an investment despite instructions to preserve cash for a planned acquisition. The investment falls in value, and the company alleges that the recommendation caused its loss.

Collect the engagement letter and the instructions about liquidity. Preserve the recommendation, risk disclosures and communications showing what the company understood. Obtain the investment statements and bank records showing payments, distributions and withdrawals. A later account balance alone cannot explain the advice or the company’s decision.

The counterfactual is the position the company says it would have occupied with proper advice. Evidence must support the proposed alternative: retaining cash, choosing another investment or abandoning the transaction. Establish whether that alternative was available and whether the company would have followed it.

Incorrect and Supported Inferences

Examine alternative causes, including market movements, the company’s later decisions and cash withdrawals unrelated to the investment. Trace each claimed loss to the alleged failure. Record disputed causes explicitly so a combined financial decline does not become an assumed single loss.

Use the economic-loss guide for the actual-versus-counterfactual schedule. Here, the task is to identify the legal assumptions that make that schedule relevant to the pleaded allegation.

Prepare the Evidence and Expert Instructions

Give the accountant a defined loss question, an indexed document set and separate assumptions for disputed facts. Identify who owns each account and which claimant incurred each item. Keep company and shareholder positions separate in the records.

Collect the following documents where relevant:

• Engagement terms, variations and instructions identifying the client and agreed work.
• Advice, representations, file notes and communications about the decision.
• Complete statements for the investment and accounts through which funds moved.
• Contracts, confirmations and records of fees or financing costs.
• Records supporting the available alternative course and the claimant’s likely response.
• Recovery payments, distributions and evidence of steps taken to reduce loss.

Expert Instruction Table

Where statement review consumes the team’s time, FinTrace handles conversion and analysis so lawyers and forensic accountants can spend those hours on the disputed issues. Its searchable ledger and findings report put the supporting PDF filename and page beside each finding. That source access helps the expert locate the transaction behind a proposed loss item.

Finish the instructions with a reproducible source schedule. Give every loss item an identifier and record its amount, calculation and assumption reference. Include the source filename and page, transaction identifier and any reconciliation adjustment. Preserve the original records alongside the working schedule so another practitioner can follow the calculation.

List the legal assumptions the expert must take from the instructions. These include the existence and scope of duty, the alleged breach, the legally relevant counterfactual and which heads of loss are recoverable. Ask the accountant to identify unsupported financial assumptions and quantify the instructed alternatives. Reserve findings about liability and contested legal causation for the legal analysis.