Woolworths

Major supermarkets Coles and Woolworths have been taken to court by the consumer regulator, accused of inflating prices for short periods in order to advertise more attractive discounts.

A unit of petrol store chain EG Australia has sued Ashurst and LegalVision alleging they breached their implied duty of care through advice given to Woolworths about the assignment of a disputed Sydney petrol station lease.

A former employee has brought proceedings against Woolworths, claiming the supermarket giant failed to properly address alleged sexual harassment in its “poor workplace culture".

On the first day of trial in parallel class actions and regulatory proceedings, the Fair Work Ombudsman panned the payment systems adopted by Woolworths and Coles for salaried managers, saying they were “entirely foreign” to the industrial award and that the supermarket giants had “no meaningful proper records” for overtime. 

A Federal Court judge has pulled the plug on a bid by the Fair Work Ombudsman for an upcoming trial in wage cases against supermarket giants Coles and Woolworths to be livestreamed like other hearings of public interest in the court.

A costs report in a settled class action against Woolworths that recommended almost $800,000 in legal fee deductions failed to wrestle with a key factor in weighing the proportionality of the costs, a judge has said.

Companies will face penalties of up to $50 million for serious privacy law breaches under legislation to be introduced the Attorney-General following data breaches by Optus, Medibank and Woolworths unit MyDeal.

Explaining his decision to reject a class action settlement that would have earned a law firm $1.75 million but provided nothing to 27,000 Woolworths employees, a judge has said the agreement created a conflict of interest between the solicitors and the workers they sought to set "adrift".

A class action settlement with Woolworths which "troubled" a Federal Court judge has been abandoned, with the lead applicants resuming their bid to intervene in a parallel proceeding brought by the Fair Work Ombudsman against the supermarket giant.

If evidence were needed that courts are not rubber stamping class action settlements, the scrutiny of multi-million dollar agreements in 2021 is proof positive that judicial oversight of representative proceedings is robust.