Senior Lecturer

Lynden Griggs joined the Faculty of Law in 1988. Prior to that time, he was in private legal practice. In his time as an academic, he has occupied the positions of Sub-Dean, Associate Dean (Teaching and Learning), Associate Academic Dean, Chair of Publications, Chair of Skills Review Committee, as well as sitting on numerous Faculty and University Committees. Griggs has an international reputation in the areas of Land Registration, Consumer Law, Property Law, and Competition Law and is the Associate Editor of the Competition and Consumer Law Journal. He is a Fellow of the Higher Education and Research Development Society of Australasia.

Career Summary

Griggs came to academia from private practice. He is admitted as a Barrister and Solicitor of the Supreme Courts of Tasmania and the Federal Courts of Australia (including the High Court of Australia) and has been an accredited mediator. He completed a research masters in corporate law, and from this his early work in academia was focussed in corporate law, as well as occupying a number of administrative positions – including Associate Academic Dean, Chair of Publications and editorship of the Journal of Law, Information and Science. After establishing his teaching credentials with this culminating in Fellowship of the Higher Education Research and Development Society of Australasia, Griggs has built an enviable research profile with the current focus being in the area of consumer protection and land law. He is regularly invited to review articles for peer-reviewed journals, and has acted as a doctorate and masters examiner on many occasions. He is a long-term member of the Australian Law Teachers’ Association, and is currently a member of the Corporate Law Teachers’ Association, Real Property Teachers’ Association and the Australian and New Zealand Sports Law Association. He has undertaken a number of consultancies for private entities, specifically in the area of corporate law or land law, and is a regular contributor to government reform inquiries. He is currently the Associate Editor of the Competition and Consumer Law Journal and sits on the editorial board of the Australian and New Zealand Trade Practices Law Bulletin. Recently Griggs as Chair completed a major review of the award of Honours in Australian law faculties. He has also consulted for the Postgraduate Medical Research Institute of Tasmania, the Tasmanian Branch of the Australian Medical Association, the Australian Society of Anaesthetists and the Tasmanian Farmers and Graziers Association.

Units Taught

Research Interests

Griggs’ current research interests are in the area of consumer protection law, land law, property law, sports law, and competition law. He is presently writing a new edition of his co-authored text, Property Law in Principle, as well as completing a major monograph for Kluwers International Encyclopaedia of Laws. This latter work has involved co-authoring the Australian contract law chapter as well as updating earlier work completed on Australian economic operators. He is presently overseeing a review of easements in Tasmania (this in conjunction with the Tasmanian Law Reform Institute), as well as examining the antitrust status of the regulation of sporting equipment. Future plans include a third edition of the highly successful Managers and the Law, published by Thomson Law Book Co – a text that sits amongst Thomson Law Books highest sellers as well as being shortlisted for Australian Education Publishing Awards.
Past publications include the editorship or authorship of 4 texts, and over 60 refereed book chapters/journal articles. He has also contributed numerous comments and case notes for the legal profession as well as being a regular contributor to Halsbury’s Laws of Australia. He has written numerous book reviews.
Griggs’ early work focussed on corporate law, with his research masters examining the relationship of the Rule in Foss v Harbottle to the then proposed introduction of the statutory derivative action. As part of this corporate law research, he wrote on the areas of directors’ duties, shareholder remedies, and corporate insolvency. This final topic has seen Griggs write recently for the International Insolvency Review. This initial corporate work also saw him be an invited speaker to international conferences on the introduction in Australia of the voluntary administration procedure.
More recently, his research interests have centred on the role of the Torrens system in a system of land ownership built around possession. The critique of this topic has been from a theoretical, contextual framework as well as from an economics/law perspective. Allied to this topic has been the extensive work undertaken on the role of vendor disclosure in modern conveyancing, with Griggs playing a critical reform in the legislative reform of this area in Tasmania. Connecting this topic of conveyancing reform to the deregulation of the conveyancing sector saw Griggs become an invited member of the Conveyancing Panel that regulated the introduction of conveyancing agents into Tasmania. Griggs is also a past member of the Property Agents Board in Tasmania, the regulatory body for real estate agents in Tasmania.
On the topic of consumer protection, Griggs has recently co-authored (with Webb and Freilich) Consumer Protection Law for Oxford University Press. This text flowed from work Griggs completed on the role of unconscionability and statutory provisions prohibiting harassment. He has also written on the topic of consumer remedies and was a contributor to the 2008 Productivity Commission review into Consumer Policy.
His work on Sports Law has seen him consider how non-specific legal disciplines, (such as competition law, consumer law and tort law), apply to the sporting context. Inexorably connected with his research in this area has been the recent introduction of a unit in Sports Law.
Griggs diverse and eclectic research interests are also shown by his co-authored work on marine policy and corporate law, native title, ticket scalping and a number of articles related to teaching scholarship – specifically the teaching research nexus, the universities responsibilities to students as consumers and the purpose of the law degree.
He has made numerous submissions to government inquiries on topics as different as organ transplantation, ownership of the body, unfair contractual terms, human rights, corporate law, residential tenancy, carbon sequestration, water management, debt recovery, and adverse possession.
Griggs is currently the Associate Editor of the Competition and Consumer Law Journal and sits on the editorial board of the Australian and New Zealand Trade Practices Law Bulletin. He is a past editor of the Journal of Law, Information, and Science.

Teaching

His award as a Fellow of the Higher Education Research and Development Society of Australasia highlights the recognition of Griggs’ teaching. He has been in a leadership role within the Faculty on a number of fronts – most notably Chair – Skills Review Committee, Chair Honours Review Committee, and Associate Dean (Teaching and Learning).

Selected Publications:

• Griggs, 2006, Ticket Scalping: Its Legal and Economic Effects on the Illusion of Perfect Innocence, Griffith Law Review
• Griggs (with Price), 2005, Property Law in Principle, Thomson Law Book Co., Sydney, pgs. 1-349
• Griggs (with Clark and Iredale) (eds), 2003, Managers and the Law, (2nd ed), Thomson LawBook Co
• Griggs (with Webb and Frielich), 2008, Consumer Protection Law, Oxford University Press
• Griggs, 2008, 'Australian Contract Law: International Encyclopaedia of Laws. 1st edition', The Hague, Kluwer Law International

Full Publication List