The High Court has upheld a ruling of the Court of Appeal of the Supreme Court of Victoria in a matter involving the liquidators of Timbercorp Finance and several of its borrowers.The liquidators, who are seeking to recover loans taken out by investors in failed Timbercorp schemes, argued that the borrowers did not raise specific defences as part of their involvement in earlier class actions and it would be an abuse of process for them to try and raise them in recovery proceedings.But in a decision handed down last week, the High Court supported the earlier Court of Appeal ruling that it was not unreasonable for the borrowers not to have raised specific issues in the group proceedings and they were not precluded ("estopped") from raising their specific defences in subsequent proceedings.Between 1992 and 2009 Timbercorp Group invested more than A$2 billion in agribusiness projects on behalf of 18,500 investors. Many investors borrowed money from Timbercorp Finance, a member of the group, to finance their investments.Timbercorp went into administration in April 2009 and into liquidation a couple of months later.At the time, Timbercorp Finance had 14,500 outstanding loans to 7500 borrowers worth $477.8 million on its books. In the months following the company's collapse, borrowers with a total of 8470 loans stopped making repayments and went into default.Timbercorp Finance's liquidator Korda Mentha started proceedings against a number of the borrowers but those proceedings were overtaken by the launch of a class action against Timbercorp late in 2009.Timbercorp investors alleged that there were deficiencies in the disclosure documents.Part of the relief sought by the class was an order that those participating in the proceedings be found not liable for repayment of loans advanced by Timbercorp.The class action was dismissed in the Victorian Supreme Court in 2011 and again on appeal a couple of years later.Following those decisions Timbercorp Finance (in liquidation) re-commenced proceedings against borrowers to recover the unpaid debts.In a Victorian Supreme Court case against investors Douglas Collins, Janet Collins and John Tomes, Timbercorp Finance argued the investors, who had been involved in the class action, could not put defences against the recovery proceedings because they were group members and subject to a legal principle called estoppel.The argument was that they should have raised their defences in the group proceeding, and having failed to do so could not raise them in subsequent proceedings.The Supreme Court ruled that the borrowers were not precluded from defending Timbercorp's claims.Timbercorp Finance appealed the decision and in June the Court of Appeal handed down a judgment upholding the Supreme Court decision.The Court of Appeal said it was not unreasonable for group members not to have raised their individual defences in the course of the class action and they should not be "estopped" from relying on their individual defences in the loan recovery proceedings.It said the defences pleaded by Collins, Collins and Tomes were personal to them and different from the allegations in the group proceedings.It also said that Timbercorp would have had to respond to