Agricultural giant Monsanto is facing a class action in Australia over the marketing of its Roundup weedkiller, after being hit with a landmark US$ 2 billion verdict in the United States.
A judge has signed off on a settlement of a long-running class action against Westpac unit BankSA, and has ruled the law firm that brought the case has an equitable right to unpaid legal costs for investigating the case before it found a funder.
A partner at Big Six firm Ashurst has challenged a NSW Supreme Court decision appointing liquidators to his Point Piper home in a protracted dispute with an ex-judge neighbour, saying the judge was confused and made an order which was an “affront to our system of adversarial justice”.
Justice David Hammerschlag of the NSW Supreme Court has a way with words that readily lends itself to dramatic courtroom headlines. The “Hammer,” as he is known, also pulls no punches and is quick with one liners that keep counsel on their toes. Here, Lawyerly looks at some of the recent best moments inside courtroom 7D.
The careful, methodical approach of 20-year class action veteran and Allens partner Jenny Campbell is in demand in the fast-changing class action world, where the only certainty is uncertainty.
The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority will not challenge a Federal Court ruling that dismissed its case against fund manager IOOF as “unpersuasive”, “fundamentally inadequate” and “tenuous in the extreme”.
The a2 Milk Company has come up short again in opposing a competitor’s bid to register a trade mark containing “a2”, with a delegate finding the reputation of its goods does not lie in the descriptive term a2 alone.
Commonwealth Bank subsidiary Colonial First State and former director Linda Elkins face a class action alleging the wealth management group breached its superannuation trustee duties by failing to promptly transfer $3.2 billion of default members’ funds to a lower-cost, high-performing MySuper product.
HWL Ebsworth has resolved a lawsuit alleging one of its partners helped the former directors of an insolvent mobile ticketing company divert the proceeds of a life insurance policy to pay money owed to the firm.
A judge is considering whether he can increase a record $75 million civil penalty settlement reached by Volkswagen and the ACCC over the dieselgate scandal, after saying the people of Australia would be “upset” if they knew about some of the “outrageous” terms to which the consumer watchdog had agreed.