Tribunal dismisses tenant’s $6,914 claim for a motorbike stolen from a strata carpark (ACAT, 2026)

What happened

The applicant was a tenant in a unit complex in Turner, in the ACT. On the morning of Thursday 9 January 2025 a third party damaged the single roller door that controlled access to the complex's basement garage. The owners corporation (named in the decision as The Owners – Units Plan 4693) instructed its strata and building services contractor, Vantage Strata Pty Limited, to arrange repairs. Repairs began the same day but were not finished that evening, so a security guard was stationed at the top of the driveway above the roller door from 6:00 pm Thursday until 6:00 am Friday, with instructions to walk through the carpark periodically. Residents were told through the building's usual communication platform.

The tenant parked his 2010 Suzuki DR-Z400SM motorbike in the basement carpark on the evening of Thursday 9 January, secured as he always secured it anywhere, by steering lock and key-activated ignition. The security guard left at 6:00 am on Friday 10 January. The building manager arrived about 7:00 am. The roller door was repaired at 9:42 am that morning. The tenant went to work on the Friday, returned to his unit for about two hours, then spent Friday and Saturday nights on the New South Wales coast. He did not return to the garage until mid-morning on Sunday 12 January, when he found the motorbike gone. He reported it stolen to police at 10:19 am that day.

Four closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras in the garage might have captured the theft, but none faced the space where the motorbike was parked. The tenant asked the building manager to review the footage. On 30 January the building manager said he had searched up to 9:00 am on Friday 10 January and found nothing, and that reviewing the rest of the period to 12 January would be charged at $210 per hour, estimated at 10 to 20 hours, a figure that could have exceeded the value of the motorbike. On 2 February the investigating police officer recorded the matter for finalisation. On 8 February that officer wrote to the building manager saying the fee was excessive and that without the footage the investigation could not go further. The building manager began the full review on 10 February without insisting on the fee and reported on 7 March that he had found nothing showing the bike being stolen. The footage was later overwritten in the system's ordinary course.

The tenancy agreement made the tenant responsible for insuring his own belongings, including his vehicle, and excluded the lessor's responsibility for theft. The owners corporation's rules warned that storage areas and cages are not secure, recommended against storing valuables there, and recommended insurance because the owners corporation's insurance does not cover those items.

What each side wanted

The tenant asked for compensation of $6,914, made up of the depreciated value of the stolen motorbike, associated costs such as registration, four sessions with a psychologist after the theft, and the Tribunal filing fee. He argued the respondents failed to take reasonable care to secure the carpark while the roller door was broken, particularly by letting the guard leave at 6:00 am when the door was not fixed until 9:42 am, and that by installing cameras, signage, fob access and then a guard they had taken on responsibility for security and he had relied on them. He also argued they were negligent in handling the CCTV review: the fee demanded cut short the police investigation, the failure to find footage showed the review was not done carefully, and the footage was then deleted. The strata manager said it owed no duty because it acted as the owners corporation's agent. The owners corporation said it owed no duty to protect a tenant from the criminal acts of third parties. Both said that if a duty existed they had not breached it and had not caused the loss.

What the tribunal decided

The Tribunal made one order: the application is dismissed. No money was ordered to be paid to anyone. The orders were made on 15 July 2026, following a hearing on 11 May 2026, and reasons were published on 22 July 2026.

The Tribunal recorded that it had been asked to accept that a police investigation solves about 49 per cent of vehicle thefts, and said that if it had found a breach over the CCTV review, that figure would have supported attributing 49 per cent of the loss to the breach. Because it found no breach, it did not turn that into any dollar amount.

Why the tribunal decided it that way

Negligence in the ACT is governed by Chapter 4 of the Civil Law (Wrongs) Act 2002. To win, the tenant had to prove three things: that the respondents owed him a duty of care, that they breached it, and that the breach caused his loss. The Tribunal found he failed on all three, and explained each in turn so the parties could see its reasoning on every point.

On duty of care, the Tribunal accepted that an occupier must take reasonable steps to prevent foreseeable harm from the state of the premises, which is called occupier's liability and appears in section 160 of the Act. But the harm here came from a criminal act by a stranger. Following High Court and Court of Appeal authority, the Tribunal held that an occupier owes a duty to prevent harm from third-party crime only where there is a special relationship with the injured person or where the occupier controls the wrongdoer. The relationship between an occupier and an owners corporation or its manager is not one of those special relationships, and the tenant did not say the respondents controlled the thief. The Tribunal also rejected the argument that the respondents had taken on responsibility for protecting residents' property. Fixing the door and posting a guard were, it found, the same function of controlling access to the garage that the fob-operated door had performed, with different measures chosen to suit the circumstances, not an undertaking to guard residents' possessions. Reliance also failed on the facts: the tenant knew the door was broken and knew about the guard, he secured the bike exactly the same way wherever he parked it, including in public shopping centre carparks, and the owners corporation's rules and his tenancy agreement told him he was responsible for insuring his own property.

On breach, section 43 asks whether the risk was foreseeable and not insignificant, and whether a reasonable person in the respondents' position would have taken the precautions suggested, weighing the probability and seriousness of harm against the burden of guarding against it. Theft was accepted as foreseeable. The Tribunal found the ordinary measures reasonable, and found the response to the broken door reasonable too: repairs started immediately and finished just over 24 hours after the damage, a guard was engaged overnight when the building was quietest, and residents were notified. The gap between the guard leaving at 6:00 am and the door being fixed at 9:42 am was described as a weighty consideration in favour of a breach, but on balance the Tribunal was not satisfied the choice of hours fell outside the range of reasonable responses, noting the building manager's reasons for those hours and that the sun had risen at 5:23 am. Constant guarded access or upgraded security infrastructure would have cost money and burdened residents out of proportion to the risk, especially as the risk of theft existed whether or not the door worked.

On causation, section 45 required the tenant to show the breach was a necessary condition of the loss. There was no evidence of when the bike was taken. It may have gone while the door worked, or while the guard was on duty. Because of that gap, the Tribunal could not find that but for the claimed failure between 6:00 am and 9:42 am the theft would not have happened. Even on the wider window to Sunday, the chain was broken by the tenant's own choice of security measures and by the thief's own actions. The CCTV claim failed as well: the review was not cut short, the whole period was eventually reviewed, the fee was never paid or insisted on, there was no evidence the review was done carelessly, and with nothing relevant found there was no clear reason to preserve the footage beyond the system's normal retention. The Tribunal also distinguished an earlier single-member ACAT decision about a stolen bicycle, where the owners corporation's own works had created the situation, because here both the broken door and the theft were the opportunistic acts of third parties.

What this means if you are in a similar position

If you are in a similar position, this decision shows how hard a claim against an owners corporation or strata manager is when the loss was caused by a thief rather than by the body corporate itself. Australian negligence law generally does not make an occupier responsible for other people's crimes. The exceptions are narrow: a special relationship recognised by the courts, or control over the person who did the wrong. A building having cameras, signs, fob access or even a security guard does not, on its own, mean the owners corporation has promised to keep your possessions safe. In this decision those measures were read as managing access to the building, not as taking charge of residents' property.

The decision also shows how much turns on evidence of timing. Even where a tribunal thinks a gap in security looks questionable, a claim can fail simply because nobody can say when the loss actually happened. The person bringing the claim carries the onus of proof on the balance of probabilities, and a suspicion that footage must exist somewhere is not the same as evidence that a review was done carelessly. Building rules and tenancy terms that tell occupants to insure their own contents and warn that storage and parking areas are not secure also carry weight, both on whether a duty exists and on whether anyone reasonably relied on the body corporate.

In disputes like this, most people start by putting the complaint in writing to the strata manager or owners corporation, setting out what happened, what they say went wrong and what they are asking for, before anything is filed at a tribunal. A written demand or complaint creates a dated record of the request and the response, which becomes part of the evidence if the matter later goes to a tribunal application.

How to apply: our step-by-step guide to a ACAT application. More decisions: ACAT cases and strata and body corporate.

Source: SCHMIDT v VANTAGE STRATA PTY LIMITED & ANOR (Civil Dispute) [2026] ACAT 45 (read the full decision). This summary was prepared from the published decision for general information. It is not legal advice, and the tribunal’s own reasons are the authoritative record.