Advice from non-lawyers and “routed” through a legal practitioner at multidisciplinary partnership PricewaterhouseCoopers cannot be shielded under legal professional privilege, the Federal Court has found.
The directors of mortgage aggregator Connective Services have been hit with indemnity costs for their “outrageous conduct” in pursuing litigation against a company shareholder, including giving false statements and destroying evidence.
A marathon hearing of an application for court approval of a $98 million settlement in two 7-Eleven class actions has ended with a judge taking the rare step of signing off on the settlement amount while withholding approval of the legal costs and funding commission.
Continuing a recent trend in class actions, a judge will appoint a referee to weigh in on Maurice Blackburn’s costs in a $56.3 million settlement in a class action against Colonial First State, but has so far declined to appoint a contradictor.
The ATO has won a legal challenge over when it can claim tax from trust income, with the High Court finding beneficiaries cannot “retrospectively expunge” their entitlements to the proceeds of a trust despite the potential “unfairness” this creates.
A Citigroup customer has hit the bank with a lawsuit alleging it gave her conflicted financial advice to invest most of her savings in “risky” products, despite being an inexperienced investor with limited funds.
A court has dismissed a challenge by a Liberal Party member to a decision by prime minister Scott Morrison and two other members of the federal executive to endorse incumbents to contest seats in NSW at the upcoming election, a ruling that paves the way for the PM to name the date.
Law firms accused of “fishing for a case” in a consolidated shareholder class action against Treasury Wine Estates have won access to key financial information in reports to the company’s board, with a registrar finding the material was relevant to the case.
A judge has held off selecting from a “basket of imponderables” in determining how he will hear two competition lawsuits by Epic Games against Apple and Google over the removal of the popular multiplayer game Fortnite from the tech giants’ online stores.
A judge has rejected an application by training provider Captain Cook College to postpone the hearing of its appeal in a case won by the ACCC, saying the company’s inability to fund the appeal was “largely a problem of [its] own making.”