Attorney-General Christian Porter has filed defamation proceedings in the Federal Court against the ABC and journalist Louise Milligan over an online article he says made false allegations against him.
A judge has slugged the CEO of a Sydney property development company with a $32,500 penalty for underpaying a live-in nanny, but he aimed his wrath at the media for having “wrongly branded” the businessman as someone who engaged in modern slavery.
A judge overseeing a class action against Bayer-owned Monsanto over its allegedly carcinogenic weedkiller, Roundup, has declined to rule on the admissibility of expert evidence in a hearing ahead of trial next year, despite concerns about the independence of the expert witnesses for the class.
MinterEllison has appointed Sydney-based partner Virginia Briggs as acting chief executive officer after the board asked CEO Annette Kimmitt to leave over her controversial staff email about the firm’s work for Attorney-General Christian Porter.
Lawyers and experts welcomed the High Court’s ruling Wednesday, which approved a class action beauty parade approach to dealing with competing proceedings and provided guidance as to how judges might otherwise manage the problem of duplicative cases. Here, Lawyerly outlines the important things to take away from the majority’s judgment.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has declared Attorney-General Christian Porter an innocent man under our law” and has no plans to remove him from his post as top law officer or seek the advice of the country’s second law officer.
MinterEllison boss Annette Kimmitt has reportedly been asked to leave the law firm after she sent a letter to staff sympathising with those upset by a senior partner’s representation of Attorney-General Christian Porter.
The ACCC has secured a court-enforceable agreement from Visa that it will not tie cheap interchange rates for large retailers to their use of the Visa network for processing debit card payments, after the regulator raised concerns the credit card giant may have engaged in anti-competitive conduct.
Judges have power to manage competing class actions by picking a winner in a so-called beauty parade, the High Court has ruled, but there is no one size fits all approach to the decision, and the law firm that files first is not guaranteed the coveted prize.
As pressure mounts for the board of MinterEllison to remove the law firm’s CEO in response to a staff email apologising for a partner’s representation of the federal attorney general, legal ethics experts told Lawyerly law firms must be free to vet potential clients, and that social issues may in the future play a bigger role in deciding whether to reject matters.