Former Slater & Gordon auditor Pitcher Partners has been hit with a class action alleging it signed off on an overly rosy 2015 year-end financial report that failed to disclose risks and impairments the firm faced from its recent acquisition of UK firm Quindell.
The Australian Bar Association can move forward with its plans to trade mark the terms ‘Austbar’ and ‘Aust bar’ after defeating a second challenge brought by a rival barristers group.
The country’s biggest law firms were among the first in line to weigh in on changes to the class action regime proposed by the Australian Law Reform Commission, with one global firm cautioning against a weakening of continuous disclosure laws.
Two ‘sham letters’ produced by a senior manager of national car repair franchise Ultra Tune led both the ACCC and the court ‘down the garden path,’ a Federal Court judge heard Thursday.
Forcing courts to choose a single winner in the battle over competing class actions would exacerbate the problems of overlapping cases and encourage the race to court, class action powerhouse Maurice Blackburn said Wednesday.
The Australian maker of Difflam has taken UK consumer goods giant Reckitt Benckiser to court over ads for Strepfen that claim the rival lozenges provide ‘longer lasting relief’ from sore throats.
The final day of trial in the ACCC’s case over muscle gel Voltaren wrapped up Wednesday with a barrister for GlaxoSmithKline slamming as ‘onerous’ a compliance regime proposed by the consumer watchdog and blasting an injunction as unnecessary for a problem the pharmaceutical giant ‘inherited’ from Novartis.
When US food giant Kraft faces off next week in its lawsuit against Aussie cheese company Bega for allegedly violating its peanut butter trade dress, the court will be faced with the thorny task of unraveling a complex corporate transaction that left both companies claiming rights to the iconic trade dress.
The timing of an email from a Herbert Smith Freehills solicitor alerting the Fair Work Commission to union contempt proceedings, which the firm argued early this year was grounds for halting the amalgamation of the CFMEU with two other unions, points to ‘a high level of collusion’ to block the merger, a judge said Tuesday.
Law firm Squire Patton Boggs is again on the losing end of a ruling by the judge presiding over a shareholder class action against GetSwift, a case now better known for infighting among lawyers than for the allegations levelled against the tech startup.