Two landmark class actions seeking damages from the Victorian government for economic losses suffered during last year’s second wave of COVID-19 have been thrown out, but one of the cases will be given a second chance to proceed.
The CFMMEU and two of its officers have been hit with a $554,600 penalty for allegedly using the union’s “covert industrial muscle” to pressure a New South Wales crane company to bend to its bargaining demands.
Virgin Australia has walked back part of its COVID-19 vaccination policy after the union representing aircraft maintenance engineers received hundred of complaints about the requirement that they provide their Individual Health Identifier as part of proof of their vaccination status.
Woodside Energy has been sued over its $16.5 billion Scarborough gas field development, with an environmental group alleging the project’s approval was invalid because the government of Western Australia failed to properly account for its impact on climate change.
The former director of investment management fund Courtenay House is facing a slew of criminal charges after an investigation by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission allegedly revealed he duped 590 investors in a $196 million Ponzi scheme.
Specialist workplace relations consultancy Employsure has been ordered to pay a $1 million penalty over a series of misleading Google advertisements, a figure significantly lower than the $5 million sought by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission.
A judge has granted a 21-day stay of a lawsuit brought by Acciona, a Spanish infrastructure company seeking to use COVID-19 as a reason to back out of its construction contract for the $696 million Kwinana waste-to-energy plant, and has warned the company it faces a difficult task to persuade the court of its case.
US pop star Katy Perry has been accused of using her “financial might” to “snuff out” the small business of an Australian fashion designer, as trial kicked off in a long-running intellectual property dispute over the rights to use the Katy Perry trade mark in Australia.
Law firm Norton Rose Fulbright has won its appeal of a $160,000 judgment in favour of former partner Thomas Martin, with the Full Federal Court finding Martin’s allegations of deceit arose from “an excess of suspicion” and “causal connections of the most tenuous kind”.
Financial services company AMP has lost its bid to de-class representative proceedings brought on behalf of 1.5 million insurance customers.