Companies

It has been described as the darkest chapter in Victoria's legal history, an exemplar of all that is terrible with class actions in Australia. A case of greedy lawyers who found their golden egg in a group of retirees who had lost their life savings, never thinking the chickens might come home to roost. Until now.

Insurers have largely succeeded in challenging COVID-19 business interruption losses claimed by a group of small businesses, in an important second test case that could save the industry billions of dollars.

Supermarket giant Woolworths will pay an additional $50 million to current and former salaried team members and has provisionally settled an underpayments class action against it.

The aircraft engineers' union has filed Federal Court proceedings against Virgin Australia over alleged privacy breaches relating to the airline's enforcement of its mandatory COVID-19 vaccination policy.

Lendlease has taken two consultants and a designer to court to recoup $8.7 million it spent on replacing combustible cladding used on its $107 million EXO residential apartment block in Melbourne's Docklands.

Dick Smith's former CFO will appeal a $43 million judgment in favour of National Australia Bank over his role in the retailer's collapse.

IOOF unit RI Advice has lost its bid to strike out ASIC’s novel case claiming it failed to protect its clients against cybersecurity risks, but a judge has chastised the regulator for causing “needless confusion” and “wasted time”.

Westpac will serve court documents, including a motion for contempt, on Forum founder Bill Papas by text message after securing a Greek mobile number for the absent accused fraudster, as the judge overseeing the bank's case pulled up Papas' former lawyer for treating his courtroom like a "suburban golf club".

The Commonwealth Bank has resolved a case brought by former head of governance and company secretary Kara Nicholls, who resigned from the bank on Tuesday as part of a settlement of her claims that the governance team was overworked and under-staffed.

A judge has told a Colonial First State Investments unit to provide information about its financial position to the lead applicant in a class action and criticised the company for failing to disclose that it had transferred its liabilities after the class action was launched.