A seriously ill 66-year-old widow has taken legal action in a bid to stop Gerry Harvey evicting her from the home she shared with her late husband, a longtime friend of the billionaire retailer.
In documents filed with the NSW supreme court, Peggy Luker alleges Harvey promised her and her husband, Garry Dent, that the home would be transferred to them as the result of property development work he did, but this never happened.
Luker has lived at the house, in Kurrajong, about 75km north-west of Sydney, for about a decade.
According to court documents, it is part of a property development put together by Harvey and Dent – a subdivision of 100 acres (40ha) of land that Harvey owned.
Dent died in 2017 and Harvey gave a eulogy at his funeral, documents tendered in court and first reported by Nine Entertainment newspapers show.
The house belongs to G Harvey Nominees, a trustee company controlled by Harvey, which, according to documents tendered in court, wrote to Luker in June last year demanding she vacate the premises by 20 August 2020.
Through her solicitor, Christopher Crawley, Luker has told the court she is entitled to the house in return for the work she and her husband did on the broader property development.
“My client advises me that Gerry promised her and the deceased that the home in which she lives … would be transferred to them,” Crawley said in an affidavit filed with the court.
He said Dent had been a property developer prior to becoming bankrupt and a friend of Harvey’s for about 50 years.
Harvey asked Dent for help with the Kurrajong subdivision in the early 2000s, he said.
He alleged Harvey changed the deal twice but eventually agreed to build them a house on “one of the cheapest blocks” of the subdivision as payment for Dent’s work.
“Whilst Gerry paid for the costs of the house construction, the deceased and my client built and designed the house to their own specifications, including things that were important to my client who had failing health,” Crawley said in his affidavit.
He said Harvey rang Luker on either the day her husband died or the day after “at length asking her a lot of personal questions, how much money she had, my parents, family etc and what the deceased had in the bank”.
“She was surprised but not thinking anything sinister let it go,” Crawley said.
However, in a phone conversation two weeks later Harvey allegedly said the deal was “nonsense”, according to Crawley.
“He said my client was not his responsibility and she was to move out and get the pension.”
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He said that in July Luker found out her body had rejected a kidney transplant and “skin cancers have been popping out all over her body”.
Crawley declined to comment or put Guardian Australia in contact with his client.
Harvey declined to comment when contacted by Guardian Australia other than saying: “It’s going to mediation so we’ll wait and see what happens then.”
The case is set for a mediation hearing on 22 November.