First published 30 Oct 2026, 4:28pm
Damien Cavallucci’s CAV Gasworks Pty Ltd has won a landmark court ruling
A high-profile Brisbane developer who tore up an off-the-plan contract and resold two luxury penthouses for double the price has dodged a $6.1 million payout in a shock court win.
The state’s highest court has ruled Damien Cavallucci’s CAV Gasworks Pty Ltd acted lawfully when it cancelled Brisbane businesswoman Yiping Jiang’s 2017 purchase of two sub-penthouses in Newstead’s Luminare high-rise.
After terminating the $4.2m contract with Ms Jiang’s company under a 5.5-year sunset clause in April 2023, the developer on-sold the two properties to new buyers for a combined total of $8.8m later that year.
The 2023 building was one of Brisbane’s most luxurious high rises
Ms Jiang initially sued, basing her lawsuit on an even higher figure by arguing the penthouses’ market value had skyrocketed to $10.3m by early 2024.
She won a staggering $6,097,841.42 in Supreme Court damages in 2025 for lost capital gains, but the Court of Appeal sensationally stripped her of the payout in a 2-1 majority on Friday.
Adding salt to the wound, the court ordered Ms Jiang’s company to pay the developer’s legal costs for both the original Supreme Court trial and the appeal, with Justice Crow concluding “the seller’s termination was lawful”.
A sunset clause allows either party to cancel an off-the-plan contract if a project isn’t finished by a set deadline, and was originally intended as a safety net to protect buyers from endless delays.
The developer had terminated the contract under a 5.5-year sunset clause. Pic: Portia Large.
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The practice has come under fire in booming property markets, with developers broadly accused of using the clause to resell properties at a premium, leaving original buyers stuck without a home or the finances to buy back into a market where values have spiked.
The appeal in Ms Jiang’s case hinged on the word “cannot” in the sunset clause.
The buyer argued the developer strictly could have issued a settlement notice because separate titles had been created, meaning the termination was invalid.
But the appeal judges ruled the building lacked a certificate of occupancy and was not practically ready for handover.
Justice Hindman found the contract must be read with common sense, noting the developer correctly labelled the alternative as “commercial lunacy”.
The buyer originally sued for lost capital gains in the Newstead project
Issuing a settlement notice would trigger a 14-day countdown, forcing the developer to demand full payment for unfinished units and therefore breach those contracts of sale.
“Construing the word ‘cannot’ in a commercial, businesslike way, the word must import with it some kind of actual, practical ability to do something beyond a mere bare ability or physical possibility regardless of the consequences,” Justice Hindman found.
“No reasonable businessperson would think that they ‘can’ issue the cl 8.1 notice in circumstances where doing so would put them in a position of breach.”
Justice Crow agreed, stating: “Any other interpretation … would require a seller to provide a settlement notice at a time when the seller was not ready to settle, that is, when the lot was not complete in all respects.”
The court dismissed the buyer’s multimillion-dollar claim entirely.
The court dismissed the buyer’s claim entirely, and ordered her to pay the developer’s legal costs
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