RHG Group "is more likely rather than less likely" to have defaulted on a $750 million loan from UniCredit in December 2008, a judge of the Supreme Court of New South Wales has found.However, BNY Trust Company of Australia (acting on behalf of the lender), served a notice to RHG of an "amortisation event" arising from an alleged default in January 2009 rather than relating to the month before. The court ruled that the evidence for the January default was more tenuous, and thus the legal basis of efforts to appoint a receiver over the loan pool - as the lender and BNY wanted - was more controversial.That being the case, the judge, Robert McDougall, in September granted relief to RHG, suspending efforts by the lender and its trustee to appoint a receiver and so in turn force the sale of the loans. A trial on the contested notice is now likely early next year.RHG, though, has had to make additional payments to the lender as if the default had taken place. RHG began making these additional payments in late September.The lender, by this stage, was no longer UniCredit (or its offshoot, the Singapore branch of HvB that originally advanced the loan in January 2008) but a related entity, Elektra Purchase No. 19 Ltd, to which HvB had assigned the loan.The judge handed down his decision in the case on 15 September 2009. The revealing details of the row between RHG (formerly Rams Home Loans) and BNY Trust have gone unreported for two months. RHG, a listed company, has also opted to make no disclosure on the wrangle, including the changed payments arrangements, to the Australian Securities Exchange.The central facts in dispute were whether or not arrears of 90 days or more in the loans funded by Elektra exceeded one per cent. If they did, then RHG was in default.BNY engaged McGrathNicol, an accounting firm, to review RHG's records.Differences between McGrathNicol and RHG over the measurement of arrears, as well as quirks in RHG's reporting practices, meant that RHG's lawyers were able to persuade the court that BNY, as trustee for the lender, could not show that it was "aware" of the alleged act of default and thus BNY was not able to put in train plans to appoint a receiver.This was a close-run argument. While the judge calculated that arrears of 90 days or more were less than one per cent in January 2009, he found that arrears exceeded the default threshold in December 2008.However, BNY relied on the arrears data for the following month in preparation of a "certificate" under the legal documents that underpins the loan, and has thus had to wait for a full trial before seeking to sell the RHG loans on behalf of Elektra.