From the ongoing saga of the high-profile Christian Porter action against the ABC to “backyard” litigation testing the serious harm bar, defamation cases made headlines in 2022, with winners and losers alike shelling out millions to lawyers to protect their reputations.
A judge has found Nine should not face an out-of-time defamation action over an allegedly defamatory episode of A Current Affair that aired in 2019.
A judge has approved a $5.8 million settlement in an underpayments class action against convenience store chain On The Run despite what she said was the class action law firm’s “extraordinary” reason for reaching the deal.
Courts stepped up their scrutiny of class action settlements in 2022, with judges grappling with difficult issues such as funding commissions in employment cases and whether settlements, even those worth hundreds of millions of dollars, were fair to group members.
Two former staffers of senator Jacqui Lambie who represented themselves in an unsuccessful unfair dismissal case have been hit with nearly $50,000 in legal costs each due to their “unreasonable conduct” in the case, including attempts to turn the proceeding into “a trial by media.”
In one of the first cases to test a new ‘serious harm’ threshold for defamation matters, a judge has knocked back a NSW house painter’s defamation case over a one star Google review, saying that people would consider “unflattering” business reviews to be expressions of personal opinion.
An appeals court has upheld a finding that an unsuccessful class action over the Carwoola bushfire was not entitled to recovery from the insurers of the plumbing company that sparked the blaze.
Two home finance companies and their father-son directors have been hit with $150,000 in penalties after a judge found they failed to cooperate with the Australian Financial Complaints Authority in an ASIC enforcement action and subjected AFCA staff to “inappropriate and unprofessional behaviour.”
A former Norton Rose Fulbright digital marketing manager has dropped her appeal of dismissed claims against two of the firm’s human resources managers in a case alleging she was fired after she complained of bullying and sex discrimination by her supervisor.
A former University of Technology Sydney professor based in Shanghai who accused the university of race and age discrimination over two years ago has been given another chance to plead his case, after a judge found he failed to fix pleadings that were previously struck out.