A judge has dismissed a professional negligence claim against a personal injury law firm, finding no prospect of success for a former client who alleged the firm “coerced” him into settlement of a workplace sexual assault case so they could receive their costs.
A judge has refused to sign off on a $42 million settlement of a class action against dairy giant Murray Goulburn, saying the commission sought by the funder appeared out of proportion to the risk and above the going rate.
A new report from the Law Council of Australia has revealed female barristers are doing more work for less money overall, with equitable briefing improvements outstripped by slow growth in fee parity.
The NSW government’s Sydney Olympic Park Authority, which is facing a class action brought by owners of apartments at the troubled Opal Tower, has laid the blame on the developer, designer and builder behind the project.
Channel Seven has lost a six-year defamation battle over a Today Tonight story that described a woman on single parenting payments as “the Centrelink cheat who got away”, after an appeals court found the publication was “manifestly unreasonable”.
Against a backdrop of an industrial relations system which has diminished union and workers’ power, class actions are again re-emerging as an alternative tool to challenge employers’ unlawful conduct. And in the current class actions landscape, the ability to run closed class proceedings on behalf of union members, or otherwise offer alternative fee arrangements to non-members in open class proceedings, is essential to trade unions’ willingness to embrace the representative proceeding regime, writes Slater & Gordon lawyer Alex Blennerhassett.
The admissibility of print-outs from the “Wayback Machine – Internet Archive” website is increasingly being considered by the Federal Court of Australia. The decision of Justice Burley in Dyno Nobel Inc v Orica Explosives Technology Pty Ltd on September 17 provides clear insight to the court’s approach to Wayback evidence and the circumstances in which it might be admissible, writes Bird & Bird’s Lynne Lewis and Angelica Sorn.
Former Wallabies star Israel Folau offered to make a public apology for a homophobic social media slur that got him fired, a court has been told.
Retail chain Sunglass Hut has agreed to backpay 620 workers almost $2.3 million after admitting it underpaid its part-time staff in stores across Australia for six years.
A challenge against the election of federal Treasurer Josh Frydenberg and embattled Liberal MP Gladys Liu may be heard by a panel of three judges, Federal Court Chief Justice James Allsop said Tuesday, as the matter speeds towards a possible November hearing.