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‘I would end up on the street’: Pensioner in legal fight with Gerry Harvey’s trust over home eviction

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Ms Luker does not have any children or immediate family and is suffering chronic health problems. Seven years ago, she had a kidney transplant and her body rejected the organ but the medication to retain the kidney caused her to develop skin cancers.

Ms Luker’s sister suffered the same illness and died three years earlier. Ms Luker has been told there is “nothing more” the doctors can do to prevent the cancers from spreading to other parts of her body.

“The thought of having to move my stuff again is just frightening … I don’t have anything. I’m on a pension. I would end up on the street,” Ms Luker said when contacted by The Age and Sydney Morning Herald.

Mr Harvey’s trust bought the block of land in Kurrajong in the 1970s but after it sat idle for decades, he enlisted his old friend Mr Dent to subdivide, build and sell houses on the land.

The two men had been friends for more than 50 years and had done a number of property deals together.

In the late 1990s, Mr Harvey asked Mr Dent to become a contractor for Harvey Norman although the extent and value of this work is now contested.

Gerry Harvey is fighting a legal battle to evict his old friend’s wife from a property owned by his trust.

Gerry Harvey is fighting a legal battle to evict his old friend’s wife from a property owned by his trust. Credit:Janie Barrett

Around 2002, Mr Harvey asked Mr Dent to relocate to Kurrajong to oversee the development of an eco-village that involved building houses on 15 plots of land over more than 100 acres amid a nature reserve. “If we make a lot of money out of it, I’ll give you some,” Mr Harvey states in his affidavit.

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Mr Harvey says there was no legal arrangement about sharing profits and Mr Dent never complained. However, Ms Luker says there was a handshake deal to share profits over $1.1 million, which later changed to $1.3 million but when the first house sold for $1.7 million, the couple did not receive any money.

Mr Harvey says he first became aware that Ms Luker understood the property to be hers after Mr Dent’s death – the same time Ms Luker discovered the property was still under the name of Mr Harvey’s trust.

Over the past four years, there have been various unsuccessful approaches to settle the dispute. When Mr Harvey personally visited the property with another man in June last year in a last ditch effort to persuade her to move out, Ms Luker felt stressed and asked them to leave.

“Maybe you can get into a housing commission or something. Surely you have a Plan B?” Mr Harvey said, according to his affidavit.

A few days after Mr Harvey’s visit, she received a formal eviction notice from lawyers informing her she had two months to vacate the property and would be liable for any damage.

The matter is due for mediation later this month.

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