Events

The trial in a much anticipated shareholder class action against engineering firm WorleyParsons scheduled to commence this week has hit a roadblock, with a last minute change in the judge that will hear the matter.

Westpac has followed ASIC's lead, launching a separate appeal to a ruling that it provided financial advice but not personal advice as part of a campaign encouraging customers to roll over external superannuation accounts.

Two rulings Friday keeping alive the common fund order are a ringing endorsement by the courts of the important role that litigation funders play in class actions, experts say, and have paved the way for more funded post-Hayne consumer litigation against banks and other financial services firms this year.

Maurice Blackburn has lost a long-running fight with the Australian Taxation Office over a tax bill on two massive class action settlements secured by the firm for thousands of Black Saturday bushfire victims.

A litigation funder wants the High Court to review a court decision's to approve a $64 million settlement in litigation over the failure of Banksia Securities while rejecting the funder's commission and legal fees.

Judgments in two appeals challenging the legality of common fund orders issued by courts in class actions will be handed down this week, and the rulings could have a profound effect on how class actions are run by lawyers and their funders in the future.

Unilever is not ready to put its long-running consumer case against competitor Beiersdorf to rest, filing a challenge to a ruling that Beiersdorf did not make misleading claims about its Nivea clinical strength deodorant products.

Clive Palmer has lost a bid to overturn an order freezing more than $200 million in his personal assets in a case brought by the liquidators of collapsed Queensland Nickel.

The Full Court has denied a request by Sanofi that it review a judge's refusal to block Alphapharm from listing its Semglee insulin injector pen on the PBS, calling the pharmaceutical giant's appeal "misconceived".

The stakes will be high for the ACCC when the trial kicks off Monday in its case against Ramsay Health Care alleging the hospital giant misused its market power and engaged in exclusive dealing, after the competition regulator came up short in its last big misuse of market power case against pharmaceutical giant Pfizer.