The ACCC got what it wanted when IVF providers Virtus Health and Healius terminated a proposed $45 million merger, but it wasn’t a win, a judge has said in mostly denying the regulator’s bid to recover the costs of its court challenge to the deal.
The law firms and barristers who defended former Dick Smith directors in sprawling litigation over the failure of the electronics retailer earned close to $68 million in fees, a court has heard.
IVF company Virtus Health has withdrawn its offer to acquire rival Adora Fertility from Healius, citing the competition regulator’s opposition to the takeover.
National Australia Bank and HSBC should be “jointly and severally liable” to pay a portion of the costs of a failed case brought by Dick Smith’s receivers against the company’s former directors because the banks stood to gain financially if the lawsuit was successful, the NSW Supreme Court has heard.
Oil exploration company PTTEP has appealed a judge’s findings that oil that gushed from one of its wells in the Timor Sea in 2009 reached the coasts of Indonesian islands and damaged the crops of local seaweed farmers.
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”.
A judge has scolded Slater & Gordon and two Westpac subsidiaries for a “disgraceful” privilege spat in a class action over allegedly excessive superannuation fees that he said had “gone badly off the rails”.
A judge has rejected part of IVF provider Virtus Health’s bid for redactions in a recent decision from the court temporarily blocking the company from purchasing rival Adora Fertility, saying some of the confidentiality claims were “staggering” and “border on ridiculous.”
A judge has given the green light to amended pleadings in a class action accusing major banks of entering a cartel agreement to rig foreign exchange rates, bringing a two-year fight over the pleadings closer to resolution.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has won an injunction to stop Virtus from completing the purchase of rival Adora Fertility until a court has ruled on the competition regulator’s challenge to the acquisition.