Federal Court of Australia

S&Q Group Pty Limited v Wei [2026] FCA 1218

ORDERS

THE COURT ORDERS THAT:

1.    The hearing scheduled for today be vacated.

2.    The costs of and incidental to the vacation of the hearing be reserved.

3.    The applicants file and serve any expert evidence by 16 September 2026.

4.    The proceeding be listed for further case management at 9:30am on 25 September 2026.

Note:    Entry of orders is dealt with in Rule 39.32 of the Federal Court Rules 2011.

REASONS FOR JUDGMENT

GOODMAN J:

1    These reasons for judgment explain why the hearing of this proceeding scheduled for 21 August 2026 was vacated.

2    The applicants sought the vacation so that they could have the opportunity to file expert evidence as to the authenticity of three documents relied upon by the first respondent to establish that he had a security interest supporting a registration under the Personal Property Securities Act 2009 (Cth). The impugned documents are each dated 12 January 2024 and each contains what appears to be the signature of the first respondent, qua director of the relevant applicant.

3    The application for an adjournment arises in a context in which: (1) the solicitors for the applicants received on Monday, 17 August 2026 an email from the liquidator of the third applicant, which forwarded an email from the first respondent to the liquidator dated Friday,14 August 2026, and which attached documents which appear to be the impugned documents; (2) on that day, the solicitor for the applicants forwarded the email to Mr Jeff Tian, Head IT Technician of AIO IT Services, with a request that he check the metadata of the attached documents; (3) later that day, Mr Tian responded indicating that: (a) he had run the impugned documents through several computer programs, and had generated screenshots which recorded a creation date of 6 December 2024; and (b) he did not have the capacity to provide an expert report; (4) the solicitor for the applicants then contacted an expert who indicated on Tuesday,18 August 2026, that he was unable to assist; and (5) the solicitor for the applicants then contacted another expert who indicated that, subject to a satisfactory conflict check, he could assist but was not in a position to provide an expert report by the date of the hearing on Friday, 21 August 2026.

4    The potential importance of the 6 December 2024 date is that as at that date the first respondent: (1) had ceased to be a director of each of the applicants; and (2) had recently received a request from a delegate of the second respondent for evidence of his security interest.

5    The first respondent opposed the application for an adjournment, principally on the basis that it had been open to the applicants to seek the production of the impugned documents for the purpose of testing well before the week of the hearing and they had refrained from doing so.

6    The principles with respect to an application for an adjournment of a hearing are well-settled and need not be repeated here. I took into account those principles, including that the exercise of the Court’s discretion is informed by s 37M of the Federal Court of Australia Act 1976 (Cth), which requires that the Court have regard to the over-arching purpose of facilitating the just resolution of disputes according to law as quickly, inexpensively and efficiently as possible.

7    In the particular circumstances of the present case an adjournment was the preferable result for the following reasons.

8    First, the impugned documents are relevant to a central issue in the proceeding, namely, whether the first respondent has a security interest and the foreshadowed expert evidence may be highly relevant to the determination of that issue, and potentially dispositive of the proceeding.

9    Secondly, the applicants did not have, until 17 August 2026, the individual impugned documents and had not been in a position to have an expert consider the date of their creation prior to 17 August 2026. In this regard, it is relevant that: (1) on 9 December 2024, a delegate of the second respondent provided to the solicitors for the applicant a copy of the documents that had been provided by the first respondent to the delegate on 6 December 2024 but did so in a manner in which those documents were combined into one .pdf file containing copies of all of the documents after redactions had been made, apparently by the delegate; (2) the applicants or their solicitors subsequently made requests – on 3 October 2025, 17 December 2025 and 15 April 2026 – of the first respondent or his solicitors for a copy of the impugned documents, which requests were not met; (3) the first respondent’s affidavit in this proceeding was not served until 14 August 2026 and that affidavit did not identify or annex the impugned documents, or provide evidence as to when any such document was executed; and (4) on 17 August 2026, the applicant served a notice to produce seeking production of any underlying agreement said to give rise to an interest under the Act registered by the first respondent on the Personal Property Securities Register in respect of each of the applicants.

10    In this context, I did not accept the submission made on behalf of the first respondent that the applicants had made a forensic decision not to challenge the authenticity of the impugned documents and must abide the consequences of that decision. In short, there was no sound basis for an inference that such a decision had been made; and there was a sound basis for an inference that the applicants’ perspective with respect to those documents changed on 17 August 2026 as a result of the information received on that day.

11    Thirdly, although I accepted that there would be prejudice to the first respondent from the vacation of the hearing, that was weighed against the potential importance of the evidence that the applicants now wish to have an opportunity to adduce. As noted above, such evidence has the potential to be dispositive of the proceeding.

Associate:

Dated:    25 August 2026