Koompahtoo Local Aboriginal Land Council v Sanpine Pty Ltd (2007) 233 CLR 115

Koompahtoo Local Aboriginal Land Council (Koompahtoo) enters into a partnership for a development with Sanpine Pty Ltd (Sanpine).
$2 million of liabilities were incurred but due to a range of issues, the development never proceeded to rezoning.
Koompahtoo declared the contract breached due to administrative issues.
Sanpine sued to say the contract was still on foot.

Gleeson, Heydon, Crennan and Gummow JJ: There are 3 types of contractual terms; warranties, conditions and intermediate terms (upholding the decision in Hong Kong Fir)
Renunciation is when there is “conduct which evinces unwillingness or an inability to render substantial performance of the contract.”
Repudiation is a breach which justifies termination by the other party.
There can be a ‘sufficiently serious breach’ of a non-essential term to justify the contract being repudiated.
Kirby J disagreed with the approach of Tramways in regards to essential terms because it involves looking at subjective intentions, which is inconsistent with the rest of the law of contracts.
Instead, you should look at the objective result of the breach.
The actual consequences of a breach should be irrelevant.
If you have intermediate terms, then a Court will always be necessary to adjudicate them because they are not the result of some inherent characteristic.
Kirby J submitted that intermediated terms and the doctrine should be abolished: you can terminate when:
- 1) there is a breach of an essential term;
- 2) there is a serious breach of a non-essential term; and
- 3) there is renunciation – so in essence there are only 2 types of terms.

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