Companies

Former Toll Group chairman Ray Horsburgh has filed a defamation suit over an Australian Financial Review article that claimed he made a racist remark at a board meeting, and the case alleges emails a journalist sent seeking comment from the businessman were also defamatory.

Aircraft engineers for Qantas are challenging a ruling that the airline had no "genuine choice" when it stood them down in March during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Notice of the discontinuance of a class action on behalf of Slater & Gordon shareholders against Pitcher Partners need not be sent to all group members, a judge has ruled, acknowledging there would be "significant practical difficulties" with trying to reach everyone.

A judge has encouraged celebrity chef Jock Zonfrillo and the publisher of The Australian to attend an in-person mediation to resolve their defamation dispute, saying that face-to-face mediations have a better chance of succeeding than those held virtually.

Rideshare giant Uber Technologies has lost a bid to keep its in-house legal team from handing over emails to a class action brought by Australian taxi drivers as well as the company behind the GoCatch taxi app.

Venture capitalist Elaine Stead wants Australian Financial Review columnist Joe Aston to hand over documents connected to confidential sources, and says Aston can't rely on a journalist's privilege protecting the identity of informants.

ANZ is gunning for a lawsuit alleging it dismissed a former director of trading after he complained about rate-rigging to be thrown out before trial.

Lawyers from three newspapers being sued by war veteran Ben Roberts-Smith for defamation are seeking sensitive documents alleged to show the former soldier asked his wife to lie about an affair.

The NSW Court of Appeal has passed on the question of whether a judge can make a common fund order when a class action settles to ensure a certain return to litigation funders, but the issue is not going away, whatever the Federal Court's decision in a parallel case.