Companies

The Federal Court must guard against "exceptions by accretion" when weighing Westpac's application to prevent the public from accessing documents filed in a lawsuit by the bank's former head of strategy, which has resolved in a confidential settlement, a judge heard Wednesday.

Google has slammed Fortnite game maker Epic Games’ landmark competition case against it as “contrary to commercial reality”, saying its competition with rival tech giant Apple means it is no monopolist.

The ACCC has accepted undertakings from Telstra and Optus not to renew agreements requiring them to pre-install Google apps on Android devices as part of its competition probe into Google.

ANZ has been hit with a sanction by the Banking Code Compliance Committee for failing to stop or refund fees charged to deceased estates after customer deaths, with the bank to pay over $3.2 million to impacted estates. 

Nine will pay $3 million to settle a class action over its coverage of litigation related to the 2004 Palm Island riots, it has been revealed, after the class action failed to suppress the settlement sum.

Despite arguing for suppression as a means only to successful mediation, Westpac now wants a settled employment case brought by an executive kept under lock and key. And in a worrying sign the Federal Court may have lost sight of the importance of open justice, a judge has indicated she would entertain an order that the suit never see the light of day.

In a landmark competition case, Apple has told the Federal Court that Epic Games and other developers should not be allowed to "freeride" on the resources and user base the tech giant has “spent many billions” to develop. 

Network Ten has won $2 million in costs against Bruce Lehrmann in his failed defamation case over the broadcaster's coverage of Brittany Higgins' rape allegations, after agreeing to a substantial haircut on its $3.7 million legal bill.

Five years after it was first hit with a competition case by Dialogue Consulting, Meta has filed a cross-claim against the Melbourne social media company, alleging it collects and stores Instagram user login credentials and instructs clients to provide inaccurate information to the platform.

Westpac has won its case against the owner of a fruit stand in Sydney's Flemington Markets over a fraudulent scheme perpetrated using a $15 million invoice discounting facility provided by the bank.