The High Court has ordered mining magnate Clive Palmer to pay Western Australia Premier Mark McGowan’s costs for contempt proceedings brought against him during the war of words that erupted between the pair over the state’s decision to close its borders at the height of the coronavirus pandemic last year.
Global resources giant BHP Group has asked the Full Court to rule foreign investors should be excluded from a shareholder class action over the 2015 Fundao dam disaster, arguing the class action regime only applies to those in Australia.
The High Court has granted special leave to the Australian Building and Construction Commissioner in a case dealing with how the CFMEU’s history as a serial offender should have been considered when assessing the penalty the union should face for breaches of the Fair Work Act.
Senior barrister Sue Chrysanthou has rejected claims that she has failed in her duties as a barrister by representing federal minister Christian Porter in his defamation proceedings against the ABC over coverage of rape allegations.
Grant Thornton has won approval to a bring a cross-claim against Forge Group, just three months ahead of trial in the collapsed engineering company’s case against the accounting firm and ten former directors for their alleged negligence in relation to its “uneconomic” purchase of CTEC in 2012.
War veteran Ben Roberts-Smith is seeking all “covert recordings” held by Nine and revealed in a number of news publications last month in which the former soldier said it was his “sole mission” to destroy the journalists behind allegedly defamatory articles accusing him of war crimes.
The stage is set for a beauty parade of two shareholder class actions against Freedom Foods and Deloitte, and the judge overseeing the cases has embraced the recommendation of the High Court to appoint an independent barrister to represent group members in the contest.
A judge has refused to sign off on $13.8 million in fees sought by law firm Maurice Blackburn as part of a $44.5 million settlement in a class action against Woolworths, saying the amount was “intuitively out of the range” of what was a reasonable legal bill for the case.
National law firm HWL Ebsworth expelled a former equity partner ahead of its failed initial public offering specifically so he would not participate in the IPO and “others would benefit to a greater extent”, a court has heard.
The failed franchisor behind the Jump Swim Schools brand has been hit with a $23 million penalty for what a Federal Court judge found were “very serious” consumer law contraventions.