DEAD LAWYER’S $71K RENT ARREARS
Virus count now four
THE operating company of a restaurant formerly directed by a disgraced Gold Coast lawyer – now dead – is having to pay $71,000 in rent arrears.
Prior to being found deceased in his unit, convicted fraud Michael Yarwood argued against paying arrears by claiming a gravel carpark’s dust left his Fu Manchu Dining eatery with huge cleaning bills.
But the Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal has found his claim the firm paid $43,000 for staff to clean the dust lacked evidence and was “improbable”.
QUEENSLAND has recorded its fourth case of the Wuhan coronavirus in another member of a group of nine Chinese tourists in quarantine on the Gold Coast.
All of the state’s confirmed cases of the new virus have come from the one Chinese tour group, who flew into the Gold Coast from Melbourne on January 27.
The nine tourists have all been in isolation in the Gold Coast University Hospital for a week.
Queensland’s latest case, a 37-year-old man, takes the number of people diagnosed with the novel coronavirus in Australia to 14, including four in Victoria, four in NSW and two in South Australia.
Queensland Chief Health Officer Jeannette Young said all four cases in the state were stable.
More than 24,000 people have been infected with the new virus and confirmed deaths are close to 500, but most cases have been confined to mainland China.
As of yesterday morning, Queensland Health had tested 526 samples from 458 people, indicating some people have been screened more than once for the potentially deadly virus.
The test can only pick up evidence of the virus if a person has symptoms, such as a fever, headache, cough and dif- ficulty breathing.
A GOLD COAST company formerly directed by a disgraced lawyer who is now deceased has had to cough up $71,000 in rent arrears.
Convicted fraud Michael Yarwood told the Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal in June last year that Fu Manchu Dining in Chevron Island did not have to pay the money because a gravel car park nearby left its restaurant dusty.
He spent claimed $43,000 the company paying staff about five hours overtime a day to clean Fu Manchu Oriental Kitchen.
However, QCAT found Mr Yarwood’s claims “lacked evidence” and ordered Fu Manchu Dining pay the rent to landlord SP (Qld) Pty Ltd. The decision was only made public last week.
Mr Yarwood, who was found dead in his unit a month later, was one of three directors of Fu Manchu Dining at the time. He was joined by Troy Hamilton and Holly Steedman.
The day after the QCAT hearing, Mr Yarwood was removed as one of the directors. Mr Hamilton, who has been a director of the company since 2015, is now the sole director.
The restaurant closed last year and reopened in October under the new ownership of Zuraya Hamilton. She was previously a director of Fu Manchu Dining between May 2015 and November 2016.
Even with the director changes the company still remains responsible for any debts incurred, including back rent.
Last June, Mr Yarwood argued he had to pay staff overtime for “dust-related cleaning costs”.
“Fu Manchu contends there has been a lot of dust blowing into the restaurant from the car park,” he said.
Fu Manchu Dining started leasing the Thomas Dr premises in November 2015 and began trading in July 2016.
Mr Yarwood claimed the business did not notice the dust until it started trading as it had been doing its own renovations.
In its ruling, QCAT said: “Fu Manchu has not provided any photographs illustrating the alleged dust problem, despite
Own. Mr Yarwood’s assertion at the hearing that the green and black surfaces in the restaurant “don’t hide” the dust.
“Nor has Fu Manchu provided evidence from any of the staff said to have been engaged in additional cleaning.”
The QCAT documents also noted Mr Yarwood claimed he had raised the issue with Emmanuel Cassimatis, the former director of SP, before Mr Cassimatis died in July 2017.
But QCAT was not provided any evidence of these conversations.
“We regard the notion of a
A League of Their serious dust problem as alleged by Fu Manchu, generating additional cleaning costs, to be highly improbable,” the QCAT judgment read. “We find that the additional cleaning costs, if there were any, have been grossly exaggerated.”
Mr Yarwood was found dead in his Main Beach apartment in July.
In the months before his death, the Supreme Court ordered him to pay $1.65 million, interest of $204,866 and court costs, to Joseph “Will the Wrecker” Smith in a bitter legal dispute.