Your call: Do call and put options trigger a right of first refusal?

In the recent case of Parramatta Commercial Holdings Pty Ltd (PCH) v Vision Medical and Health Pty Ltd (VMH) [2018] NSWSC 272, Justice Kunc in Equity was tasked with deciding whether or not an offer by PCH to sell land in the form of a call option engaged a right of first refusal to purchase the land held by one of the lessees, VMH, who submitted that this could only have been achieved by a traditional contract for sale and not by an option contract.

As Kunc J put it, this dispute turned on the proper construction of the right of first refusal and the option contract, to be found by using the approach set out by the High Court in Woodside Energy Ltd v Electricity Generation Corporation [2014] HCA 7: