The Victorian government has elevated an Associate Justice who has overseen class actions and a senior counsel who assisted the Victorian royal commission into Crown Resorts to serve as judges on the Supreme Court of Victoria.
A former McDonald’s franchisee has lost his challenge to a privilege claim by the fast food giant in his lawsuit alleging he was wrongly dropped after questioning his neighbour’s Indigenous identity in a 2019 viral video recording an altercation over an Aboriginal flag.
Requests by litigants for judges to disqualify themselves from presiding over cases were largely denied last year, in a raft of decisions containing lessons for litigants weighing up their own recusal bids in 2023.
A judge who previously acted for a United Petroleum Group company in a “highly acrimonious” case eight years ago has refused to recuse herself from adjudicating a new dispute involving a related company.
A prominent Melbourne lawyer and his wife have been restrained from acting in a property dispute, after a judge found they misled the court and facilitated a false settlement in favour of their clients.
A class action against Bayer over its allegedly defective Essure contraceptive devices has admonished the drug manufacturer’s bid to shield emails considered privileged in similar US litigation, arguing “thoughts and prayers” are needed to sustain the claim.
Uber has appealed a ruling that found many of its email exchanges with its lawyers were made in furtherance of offences at the centre of a class action and were not protected by legal professional privilege.
The former director of Mayfair’s failed IPO Wealth Holdings, James Mawhinney, has lost his challenge to a judge’s decision allowing liquidators to examine him for an eighth day about the transfer of “considerable assets and funds” from the fund to other entities he controlled.
A judge has denied Uber’s attempts to withhold documents in two lawsuits on the basis of legal professional privilege, finding many of the client-lawyer communications were made in furtherance of various offences by the rideshare giant at the centre of a class action lawsuit.
The liquidators of Mayfair’s failed IPO Wealth Holdings have won their bid to question the fund’s former director, James Mawhinney, for the eighth time over assets that could provide “significant potential recoveries” for shareholders.