Appeals

The High Court has agreed to take up an appeal by mining giant BHP Group Limited in its battle with the Australian Tax Office over an $82M tax bill.

The writing may be on the wall for common fund orders in class actions that put all unregistered group members on the hook for a litigation funder's commission, after the High Court agreed Wednesday to take up landmark challenges by Westpac and BMW, experts say.

The High Court has upheld an appeal by a mortgage broker with a history of run-ins with the law, finding that the Administrative Appeals Tribunal could not take spent convictions into account when reviewing ASIC ban orders.

The High Court has granted applications by Westpac and BMW to weigh in on the validity of common fund orders made in class actions, a decision that could have major ramifications for the way representative proceedings are funded.

The Bank of Queensland has criticised a judgment which found the bank's insurance policy left it on the hook for a $6 million settlement of a class action brought by investors in a multi-million dollar Ponzi scheme by jailed fraudster Bradley Sherwin.

The High Court has sided with Gina Rinehart in relation to a dispute with two of her children over billions of dollars in iron ore mining assets, saying the matter should be heard in arbitration.

Lawyers for Deloitte were questioned by an appeals court Monday after arguing that the accounting giant's partners had no access to the firm's files, stored in a locked "litigation room", and no power to hand them over to comply with discovery orders in a shareholder class action over the collapse of client Hastie Group.

Law firm Maurice Blackburn has fired its opening salvo in a high-stakes appeal of a judge's decision rejecting its class action against BHP over the Brazilian dam failure, saying the ruling deprived group members of pocketing higher net returns on any recovery and of choosing a more experienced firm to run the case for them.

The battle over competing shareholder class actions against logistics tech company GetSwift is over, with the High Court rejecting a bid by one of the losing class action applicants to take another look at their case.

A director of an energy company who was kicked off the board for missing too many meetings has filed an appeal of a ruling dismissing his case over delays in complying with court requests after his lawyer from Maddocks withdrew from the case due to late payments.