Appeals

Industry group Meat & Livestock Australia is challenging a ruling allowing US company Branhaven's cow genome patent to proceed, after a judge called the group's challenge to Branhaven's amendments to the patent "bizarre" and "flimsy".

Maurice Blackburn has not given up its fight with the Australian Taxation Office over a multimillion dollar tax liability on record-setting class action payout for Black Saturday bushfire victims.  

Fairfax Media is challenging a ruling ordering it to pay $280,000 in damages to Chau Chak Wing for an allegedly defamatory article that appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald linking the wealthy Chinese-Australian businessman to an international bribery scandal.

A Sydney community group has lost a last-minute challenge to the demolition of Allianz Stadium, with the Court of Appeal throwing the case out in a unanimous decision.

The High Court has upheld a $1.3 million damages award to native title holders in the Northern Territory town of Timber Creek for their loss of spiritual attachment to the land, in the first ever assessment by the court of native title compensation.

An appeals court has dismissed a challenge by Veritas Advisory principal liquidator David Iannuzzi to the admissibility of evidence submitted by the Australian Taxation Office in the agency's case seeking compensation and a 10-year ban.

An appeals court has dashed the hopes of three group members of a resolved class action over managed investment schemes operated by agribusiness Great Southern Group who sought more time to appeal approval of the settlement deed, which put them on the hook for repaying their loans to Bendigo and Adelaide Bank.

A judge who hit Pitcher Partners with a $5.6 million damages ruling over an accounting error concealed from corporate client Neville's Bus Service was wrong to hold that the transport operator's losses flowing from the error were real, the firm has argued.

Westpac has followed ASIC's lead, launching a separate appeal to a ruling that it provided financial advice but not personal advice as part of a campaign encouraging customers to roll over external superannuation accounts.

Two rulings Friday keeping alive the common fund order are a ringing endorsement by the courts of the important role that litigation funders play in class actions, experts say, and have paved the way for more funded post-Hayne consumer litigation against banks and other financial services firms this year.