Judges

Fighting a class action that claims the age pension discriminates against Indigenous Australians because of differences in life expectancy, the Commonwealth says the rate of welfare dependency among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders could impact the case.

Alleged war criminal Ben Roberts-Smith has won a bid to call a troop commander known as Person 81 in his defamation trial against Fairfax Media, despite the media company’s objections.

A French Bulldog breeder has won a defamation case over Facebook comments calling her business a ‘puppy farm’.

The Full Federal Court has rejected an Australian inventor’s appeal of a ruling that found three manufacturers of essential oil products did not infringe his patent because the oil was a “staple commercial product”.

Ernst & Young has settled all claims against it in a shareholder class action alleging the Big Four accounting firm and Pitcher Partners signed off on an overly rosy year-end financial report that failed to disclose risks and impairments associated with the law firm's disastrous $1.2 billion acquisition of UK insurance claims company Quindell.

A judge has allowed three witnesses for HK Realway to give evidence by video link at an upcoming negligence trial against Thomson Geer, over protests from the firm, which said it would be inherently unfair.

Defunct financial advisory firm Dover Financial and its former director have taken ASIC to court seeking discovery as they mull a potential lawsuit against the corporate regulator.

The Twigg family has hit accounting firm Pitcher Partners with a lawsuit claiming it helped Max Twigg, race car driver and former owner of the Byron Bay Hotel, misappropriate $127.8 million in family trust money for himself.

A litigation funder challenging a decision underpinning recently enacted rules that require class actions to be registered as managed investment schemes told an appeals court Wednesday the decision was plainly wrong and the regime unworkable.

A former ANZ employee has won her bid to discover a range of documents in her long-running dispute with the bank over alleged discrimination related to her pregnancies with her first two children.