A judge has found a BHP mine took adverse action against a labour hire worker by excluding him from entering a Queensland mine after he complained about safety, rejecting arguments that the mine could not take adverse action because it did not employ the worker directly.
Two former directors of the Australian unit of BCEG have lost their “urgent” bid to vary freezing orders after a judge found they swindled millions from the company to fund their own developments and buy a luxury apartment.
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.
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.
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.
Regenerative medicine company Mesoblast has hit back at a shareholder class action over its Remestemcel-L treatment for COVID-19, saying that some group members are barred from bringing claims because of a settlement reached in a US class action.
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.
A full bench of the Fair Work Commission has overturned a ruling that a Virgin Australia flight attendant was unfairly sacked, finding she breached the airline’s policies by sleeping on the job and stashing snacks in her crew bag.
Thomson Geer has lured a long-standing partner from Adelaide firm Finlaysons to lead its banking and finance team after its former banking head partner decided to end his 40-year stint with the firm.
Nine Entertainment and Marcus Bastiaan have reached a settlement which includes a contribution to legal costs but no damages in a defamation case over a 60 Minutes segment accusing the former Liberal powerbroker of branch stacking.