The General Environmental Duty requires a person engaging in an activity that may give rise to risks of harm to human health or the environment from pollution or waste to minimize those risks, so far as reasonably practicable (s 25(1) Environment Protection Act 2017 (Vic)).

Directors of Australian companies face significant personal monetary – and potential criminal and adverse professional – consequences if they allow the company to trade whilst insolvent.
Australian insolvent trading laws are harsher, and more frequently utilized to prosecute directors personally, than in many other jurisdictions including in the US and the UK.

The courts were busy in the second half of 2021 with developments in the space where insolvency law and environmental law overlap.
In Victoria, the Court of Appeal has affirmed the potential for a liquidator to be personally liable, and for there to be a prospective ground to block the disclaimer of contaminated land, where the liquidator has the benefit of a third-party indemnity for environmental exposures

In brief The Supreme Court of Victoria has found liquidators can be made personally liable for clean-up costs in respect of land that was, on their appointment, polluted or environmentally hazardous as “occupiers” under the Environment Protection Act 1970 (Vic) (EP Act).[1] A disclaimer notice issued by the liquidators in respect…