Companies

The tax office has asked the High Court to overturn a decision which found that payments made by Asahi Breweries-owned Schweppes to PepsiCo under agreements to sell brands such as Pepsi and Mountain Dew in Australia were not subject to a royalty withholding tax. 

Telstra has hit back at a senior barrister’s suit alleging it flags his emails to Bigpond addresses as spam and fails to send them, saying the problem has already been fixed. 

A court has granted Rio Tinto unit Energy Resources Australia an interim stay to allow it to contest the government's decision not to renew its lease for the Jabiluka uranium mine in the Northern Territory.

Super Retail Group has made a bid to disqualify the solicitors of its former chief legal officer, who has sued the company to enforce an alleged settlement. But the Rebel Sport owner may have to defend a duelling application to disqualify its own solicitors, from Big Six firm Allens.

A $13.5 million settlement has been reached in a Gadens-led class action against former Quintis director Frank Wilson, and the funder of a rival class action is preparing to seek a chunk of the sum in what a judge has called a “most unusual circumstance”.

The High Court has been asked to overturn a Full Court decision finding lawyers can take a cut from a class action settlement under a solicitors’ common fund order and to finally settle the question of whether the court has the power to issue common fund orders at all.

In a first for a Big Four firm, PwC has made good on its promise to appoint an independent chair to its board and has tasked law firm Webb Henderson and former top judge with tracking its progress on other commitments made in the wake of its tax leaks scandal.

A Gadens-led class action against former Quintis director Frank Wilson has settled, but a second class action filed by a rival firm has flagged a potential claim on the settlement funds over a cause of action said to have been “picked up parasitically”. 

The Full Federal Court has revived an out-of-time defamation case over an episode of A Current Affair, finding that it would not have been reasonable to file the proceedings within a year given the “spectre of criminal proceedings” against Queensland man Geoffrey Landrey.