Big Red Bash loses court battle

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Pete, if it works then that's a 'great' business model!
But not a good ethical model.

I don't understand how it is legal, but it must be?
Clearly I am missing something.
Cheers,
Peter
OKA196 motorhome

They volunteer and get free entry to the concerts.

Wonder how many of the committee work for tickets alone.......Seems to me to be just another money making scheme for bugger all outlay relying on volunteers.

We volunteer because we enjoy it.
And the tickets are worth around $500 each, so at a required 16 hours of volunteering that represents $31.25 an hour, which isn't bad for (mostly) unskilled labour.
I'm sure the artists are paid the appropriate rate, as are the employees of the festival company.
But we need to recognise that throughout Australia volunteering is one of the things that make our community tick - just think of your local golf, bowls, Lions, Rotary clubs etc.
We should celebrate the people who conceived the Bash, took the risk, and made it work as a great event. And I certainly don't begrudge them making a dollar out of it.
Let's hope COVID leaves us alone and we have more live music festivals.
Cheers

Given the exclusion on the policy and the proximate cause of the cancellation ie caused by or resulting from Covid 19, it would seem to have been a difficult case to win.

Event Insurance is generally taken out to protect the organiser's purse against weather related events. The policies go further than that but that is the main (likely) reason. I don't know what inspired them or their legal advisers to pursue the pandemic line in court but I am aware of some loose wordings in other policies that needed a court to rule on. Reference in the policies to repealed legislation instead of the current one gave claimants some confidence of a ruling in their favour.

There have been previous challenges on the basis of that "repealed legislation." They have all failed as well. I do not know why they thought they would get up where others have failed

Peter,
I was only using the repealed legislation by way of example. There are a number of loose wordings that, depending on the losses, are possibly worth exploring. Some of those cases I referred to are still before the courts under appeal but they are not related to Event type policies. Fair to say the insurance industry was not well prepared for a pandemic but so far their wordings seem to have stood up to their intended purpose. Watch this space.

In a similar vein that may be of interest ...

My son has a friend who was denied a refund or credit for holiday accommodation that had to be cancelled due to him and his family being residents in one of NSW's LGAs of concern last year and was thus unable to travel due to NSW Govt restrictions. The amount involved was some thousands of $$$. The accommodation company flat out refused any negotiation and in an effort to put him off invited him to sue them. This he did.

He did his research, represented himself and won the case.

The basis of his win was that somewhere there is a law that basically says a person cannot be financially disadvantaged due to the application of a decree by the state.

I know no further details, but that is the gist of it. I do not know the situation in other states, but if anyone feels they have been done over in similar circumstances it may be worth some investigation.

A bold move to represent yourself. We're often told that people who represent themselves have a jackass as a client. :-) I'm pleased to hear otherwise.