BlueScope Steel general manager Jason Ellis wanted no record kept of a meeting with four of the company’s competing steel distributors and warned his national sales manager to keep the talks under wraps, a court hearing the ACCC’s price-fixing case was told on Thursday.
BlueScope has labelled “delusional” an argument by the competition regulator that alleged correspondence from a distributor about the steel company’s suggested higher prices was evidence of price-fixing.
Steel maker Bluescope’s claim that it didn’t engage in cartel conduct because it only encouraged distributors to set a price for its products would “eviscerate” cartel laws, the ACCC has told a court.
The applicant in a shareholder class action against IOOF wants to add ten new misconduct allegations, including that a relative of a former executive made $69,000 by offloading shares.
The funder backing a class action accusing two energy generators of gaming Queensland’s energy prices wants the Full Court to find the landmark Brookfield Multiplex ruling, which held that a litigation funding arrangement for a class action was a managed investment scheme, was wrongly decided.
A friend of Christian Porter’s accuser has lodged complaints with the NSW legal watchdog against silk Sue Chrysanthou and Porter’s solicitor, Rebekah Giles, for their conduct in representing the former Attorney-General in his defamation case against the ABC.
A green activist who filed a group proceeding alleging the government failed to disclose the impacts of climate change to investors in sovereign bonds does not have a common interest with group members and should have her lawsuit declassed, a court has heard.
Queensland crane company NQCranes wants to strike out the bulk of the ACCC’s amended case alleging a conspiracy with a multinational rival to divide the Brisbane and Newcastle markets, saying there was no evidence of the regulator’s new allegations of a second cartel agreement.
Noting that the legal costs of a dispute over whether she could represent federal minister Christian Porter in his defamation case were “substantial”, Sue Chrysanthou SC has asked to see invoices before she agrees to a lump sum bill of $550,000.
When trial begins next month in the ACCC’s cartel case against BlueScope Steel, the parties will all appear by video, with a judge saying “hybrid” hearings – where some parties are in court and others appear by video – were “unsatisfactory”.