Opal Tower: A Textbook Case in Fixing Serious Defects
Opal Tower is finally defect-free after eight years. A leader, a coach, and a defendant with money made it happen.
On Christmas Eve 2018, cracks on level 10 of Opal Tower at Sydney Olympic Park sent thousands of residents onto the street. Police closed roads and the train station. Days later, more cracks were found on other levels.
On 10 October 2026, owners cut a ribbon to mark the building being declared defect-free. Eight years is a long time to wait to get what you paid for. As these things go, it is a good result, and one every committee facing serious defects can learn from.
Why is Opal Tower a textbook case?
Opal Tower is a textbook case because it shows that defects litigation is a team sport. A winning team needs three positions filled: a leader, a coach and a defendant with money. Fill all three and owners have a real chance. Miss one and they can spend a decade in court and still end up with a building that nobody wants to call home.
What does a good leader look like?
A good leader looks like Shady Eskander, chair of the Opal Tower owners corporation. He had 392 lots behind him, and owners in a building like that rarely agree on anything. Some want to sell and get out. Some want to sue everyone. Others want to stay quiet to protect values. Eskander kept those factions together and brought his owners with him for eight years. That is no mean feat.
He also used the media strategically. Opal Tower stayed in front of the public and the politicians, which kept pressure on the people with the power to fix it. Silence suits defendants. Eskander made sure there wasn't any.
Why does the leader need a coach?
The leader needs a coach because nobody wins a major defects case on instinct. The coach is the adviser who has run these cases before. They decide who to sue, on what basis, in what order, and when to settle. Committees left to work this out alone usually pick the obvious target, run out of money, or settle too early for too little.
Good advice turns a crisis into a campaign with a plan. It also stops the leader from wearing every decision personally, which matters when owners are angry and looking for someone to blame. The coach must also be independent. An adviser who diagnoses the defects and then profits from fixing them is coaching the wrong team.
Read: The One Conflict of Interest That Could Cost Your Building Millions
Why does the defendant need money?
A defendant needs money because a judgment against an empty company is worth nothing. Many defect cases end exactly that way. The builder goes into administration, the developer's special-purpose company is wound up, and owners are left holding a court order and a special levy.
At Opal Tower the defendants could pay and, in the end, accepted their share of the blame. Builder Icon and its parent Kajima reportedly spent more than $50 million on repairs. All legal matters are now resolved, owners have been compensated, and the building carries a 20-year structural warranty. Credit where it is due: the defendants did the right thing.
Where did luck come into it?
Luck came into it in two ways. First, the land was originally owned by Sydney Olympic Park Authority, a NSW Government body treated as a developer under the Home Building Act. Owners played that card well. Their class action named the Authority as defendant, which put a party in the dock that could not fold up and disappear, and brought the State into the room.
Read: When a Building Fails, Government Doesn't Have to Pay. It Does Have to Show Up.
Second, the timing. The cracks appeared 18 months after Grenfell, when governments around the world were working out how to respond to catastrophic failures in tall towers. Mascot Towers followed six months later. NSW appointed a Building Commissioner and passed major reforms. Opal Tower became the case that had to be seen to be fixed.
What should other owners take from this?
Other owners should take from this a simple test. If your building has serious defects, check your team before you check your legal options. Do you have a leader who can hold the owners together for years, not months? Do you have an independent adviser who has done this before? Is there someone on the other side with the money to pay?
If the answer to any of those is no, fix that first. Most buildings will not get the luck Opal Tower had. They can still get the leadership and the advice.
