The complaint centred around Day's Commonwealth-funded electorate office, which was located in a building formerly owned by Day and leased to the Commonwealth. In 2013, Day sold the building to a trust of which his family's business trust was a beneficiary. The rental payments from the Commonwealth were to be paid into an account controlled by Day. The High Court, sitting as the Court of Disputed Returns, convened a preliminary hearing before Gordon J, whose judgment delivered on 27 January 2017 made numerous findings of fact. The case was heard on 7 February by a full court of the High Court, which delivered its judgment on 5 April. The Court found that, since at least 26 February 2016–the day that the building's owner first directed that the rental payments go to Day's bank account–Day had had an "indirect pecuniary interest" in an agreement with the Commonwealth, and thus was in violation of section 44(v). At least three judges were prepared to say that the violation dated to 1 December 2015, when the Commonwealth initially entered into a lease agreement with the building's owner. This was despite the fact that Commonwealth public servants advised Finance Minister Mathias Cormann that it was open to him and that it would not be a conflict to make rental payments under the lease from 1 March forward (Hansard 7 November 2016). "The issue", he said, "was not a concern to the department at that point in time”. The High Court, however, found otherwise. It held that Day was ineligible to serve in the Senate as of 26 February 2016, and he was therefore ineligible to nominate for the federal election of 2 July 2016. The Court declared Day's seat vacant and ordered that a special recount of South Australian ballot papers be held in order to determine his replacement. Both Day and the Attorney-General envisaged that Day's replacement would be the other person on the Family First list in that election, Lucy Gichuhi, and the Court agreed. The Australian Labor Party lodged a challenge, claiming that Gichuhi might still be a citizen of Kenya, hence ineligible under Constitution section 44(i) as a citizen of a "foreign power". On 19 April 2017 a full court of the High Court found that the objection had not been made out and declared Gichuhi elected. In May 2017, Day and the also disqualified Rod Culleton were informed by the