A judge has allowed Slater & Gordon to adjourn a fight about security for costs in a shareholder class action against Beach Energy until it has more favourable evidence of its debt financing position, over the energy company’s objection to the “doctrinally unprecedented” application.
The law firm behind a class action against Insurance Australia Group has secured a group costs order that will give it 30 per cent of any proceeds — a contingency fee rate six percentage points higher than the median rate for shareholder cases.
Builder J Hutchinson and the union for construction workers have successfully appealed a finding that they unlawfully agreed to boycott an independent subcontractor at a Brisbane building site.
Mehreen Faruqi is fighting to include evidence of senator Pauline Hanson’s alleged history of ‘dehumanising’ comments on race and ethnicity in a trial over the One Nation leader’s tweet saying the deputy Greens leader should “piss off back to Pakistan”.
The Full Federal Court has found it was “abundantly clear” on the evidence before a trial judge that funeral expenses insurance provider ACBG misrepresented to Aboriginal customers that it was Aboriginal owned or managed, but found ASIC contributed to the error with its bad pleadings.
The Supreme Court of Queensland has found that a 2021 direction for police officers to receive the COVID-19 vaccination was unlawful and a similar mandate for ambulance service workers had no effect.
Victoria’s Peninsula Health has abandoned an appeal of a ruling in a class action that found it breached workplace laws by failing to pay overtime to a junior doctor, a capitulation that could be a game changer for a series of class actions against health care providers.
A judge has ordered soft class closure in a class action against Suncorp unit AAI over allegedly worthless insurance, saying that knowing how many of the 200,000 group members are likely to participate would assist in resolving the case.
A Sydney law firm and its principal have been fined $14,400 for disobeying a Fair Work Ombudsman compliance notice issued for the alleged underpayment of a paralegal, with a judge saying the lawyer’s belief she did not owe any wages was “unreasoned and unreasonable”.
A judge overseeing an appeal in a carriage dispute in a class action against Jaguar Land Rover over allegedly defective diesel filters has said he prefers the approach of the Supreme Court of Victoria to such fights, saying firms should not revise their bids multiple times.