The Commonwealth can be held criminally responsible for damage to First Nations sacred sites in the Northern Territory, the High Court has unanimously found in a case over construction damage to Gunlom Falls in Kakadu National Park.
A leading class action firm may seek compensation for those who were illegally detained after the High Court ruled that Australia’s system of holding individuals indefinitely in immigration detention is unlawful.
The High Court has dismissed a constitutional appeal by Irish insurer Zurich, clearing the way for a class action over an allegedly defective New Zealand apartment block to proceed in the NSW Supreme Court.
Notional GST payments by local councils under an intergovernmental agreement with the Commonwealth are a voluntary act, not an impermissible tax in breach of the Constitution, the High Court has ruled.
The High Court has revoked special leave to Facebook to challenge a case by the privacy commissioner, finding that the social media giant’s grounds of appeal no longer involved issues of public importance.
The High Court has thrown out laws that banned unions and other third parties from spending more than $20,000 on political campaigns ahead of a New South Wales state election in March.
The West Australian government has flagged a bid to scuttle mining magnate Clive Palmer’s latest lawsuit claiming he can sue the state for up to $30 billion over mining tenements in the Pilbara.
The High Court has ordered the building and construction union to pay a maximum fine of $63,000 for telling workers they could not be on a job site if they were not union members, saying its serial offending showed it had no “regard for the law”.
An appeals court’s finding that the federal government does not owe a duty of care to Australian kids to protect them from the effects of climate change will stand after the lead applicants declined to take the matter to the High Court.
The Full Federal Court has overturned a historic judgment that found the federal minister for the environment owed a duty of care to Australians under 18 to protect them from ‘catastrophic’ harm caused by the approval of the Vickery coal mine expansion.