Companies

A judge has imposed a $21 million penalty on Uber for misleading customers through platform-wide cancellation messages and estimated fares on its Uber Taxi option, $5 million short of the “very substantial” sum jointly agreed by the parties.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has brought proceedings against Telstra alleging it misled almost 9,000 customers about the upload speed of its budget internet provider Belong. 

A contradictor in two pelvic mesh class actions against Johnson & Johnson has opposed Shine Lawyers recovering $100 million in costs from a $300 million settlement, which a judge has preliminarily found is not fair and reasonable to group members.

Trial in the battle of the buns has begun, with McDonald's laying out a case for why its rival's Big Jack burger infringes its trade mark, and Hungry Jack's firing back that consumers could not confuse its flame-grilled meal with the iconic Big Mac.

Westpac has lost a bid to keep group members in the dark about the premiums paid for allegedly worthless consumer credit insurance, information the bank said could inflate expectations about settlements worth $126 million reached in three class actions.

Mining company Quantum Graphite has filed proceedings against accounting firm Grant Thornton over a 2020 report that caused the Australian Stock Exchange to suspend trading in the mining company’s securities for 14 months.

A judge has raised doubts about ex-commando Heston Russell's barrister's claims that it "screamed from the page" of an allegedly defamatory ABC article that her client committed war crimes.

ASIC has lost a case accusing the Commonwealth Bank of Australia of hitting customers with $55 million in unauthorised fees, with a judge finding that nearly 1 million customers charged the fees should have known that even banks "sometimes make mistakes".

Federal prosecutors pursuing a case against Members Equity have lost an appeal of a ruling that threw out half the charges against the direct bank as time barred, with an appeals court finding the ASIC Act imposes a hard deadline for bringing a criminal case of misleading or deceptive conduct.

A judge has questioned a tiered contingency fee arrangement in a proposed group costs order by the law firm running a shareholder class action against Crown, asking whether the lower-end percentages were “meaningless”.