Sydney agency to pay $800k-plus in damages after 2019 house fire

In a civil court decision handed down in the Supreme Court of NSW on 19 March following a two-day hearing the week prior, Chief Justice Hammerschlag handed down a number of orders, which were related to the costs of personal property lost by the tenants and damages for the cost of the restoration of the house for the property owner.

All in all, the agency was ordered to pay the property owner $740,842.93 plus interest, while the tenants were awarded upwards of $120,000 collectively.

Julie Bundock, who at the time was employed by Domain Residential Northern Beaches Pty Ltd, had been retained by the owner of 92 Riverview Road, Avalon Beach, for the sale of the property, which was at the time being tenanted by four individuals.

At the time of the fire, and in the lead-up to the fire’s commencement on 25 May 2019, Bundock was the only person at the house, and according to Chief Justice Hammerschlag “in control of it”, given she was there to supervise an open house, on behalf of the landlord/owner, and in the lead-up to a planned June auction.

Just prior to the fire engulfing the home, Bundock had taken laundry items off a makeshift clothesline on the deck at the front of the house and put the items in a downstairs room on a steel shelf, which was situated underneath a light fitting, before turning the light on.

A significant element of the civil dispute was whether Bundock had placed the damp bedding on the shelf near the light, or even potentially covered the light, with the judge considering evidence provided by the owner and tenants of the home.

Soon after the fire, she was reported by the property owner to have said words to the effect of, “Oh my God, Pete! I think I have burnt down your house. I had been doing some tidying up. I collected some sheets drying on the veranda and threw them on top of a freestanding metal shelving in the bedroom under the stairs. I just threw them there Pete, right up against the light on the wall. I think that’s what started the fire.”

In both affidavit evidence and under cross-examination, Bundock disputed ever stating this, but the judge called the agent “an aggressive and uncooperative witness”.

He stated: “Her evidence was clearly coloured by a heightened awareness that she had caused the catastrophe.”

He also considered that it would “border on the fanciful to suggest that, Bundock having done what she did, the fire was a mere coincidence”, leading him to consider that on the balance of probabilities, that the agent had caused the fire.

“That a fire might be caused by putting or throwing bedding up against a burning light is obvious. That risk was plainly foreseeable, and Bundock ought to have known this. A reasonable person would not have created that risk of harm but if they did, would have taken precautions against that harm eventuating.”

Chief Justice Hammerschlag stated: “In this case, Bundock actively created the risk of fire and the consequent harm. Once having created the risk, she took no precautions against it.”

Finding that Bundock’s negligence “caused the harm in this case”, the judge cited the implications contained within Australian Consumer Law around the agency agreement that was entered into between Domain Residential Northern Beaches and the owner of the house, which implied “a guarantee that Domain will render its services with due care and skill”.

And as a result, he found that Domain Residential Northern Beaches had breached the guarantee, thereby breaching its duty to “take reasonable care to prevent damage to their [the tenants] personal property and the house respectively”.

During the proceedings, the agency had argued that while there was a possibility that the bedding being under the light could have caused the ignition of the fire, there was no real evidence before the court that would establish whether a lightbulb could have caused ignition of the bedding within 20 minutes – or at all, and that there was no evidence the heat generated from the lightbulb in this case was “capable of doing so”.

The agency also pleaded that there should be reduction, to nil, of damages that it may have been liable “because the plaintiffs, or some of them, were concurrent wrongdoers who caused the damage”.

On that point, Domain had stated that the tenants as well as the owner should have disclosed to the agency, and Bundock, their knowledge that, if the light was turned on, the shelf would get hot, but Chief Justice Hammerschlag disagreed, stating “there was no occasion which could reasonably have called for the suggested disclosure”.

“Bundock acted on her own motion. Her actions were the sole cause of the harm.”

In his judgment, the Chief Justice ordered a number of costs be paid by the agency to the tenants and the property owner.

The judge ordered the Northern Beaches agency to pay the property owner damages totalling $740,842.93 for the cost of restoring the house, including interest from 26 May 2019 to the judgment date.

Costs orders were also made for the personal belongings of all tenants, with the losses agreed on by all parties totalling more than $120,000, plus interest.