A Federal Circuit Court judge has hit back at accusations he conducted “the grossest parody of a court hearing” when he unlawfully imprisoned a Queensland man for contempt of court, telling a trial “he is a human being [who] made a mistake”.
More than 18 months after a split emerged among the courts, the Full Federal Court will weigh in on whether judges have power to shut out unregistered group members from a class action. But given the breadth of the question for the appeals court, the issue is unlikely to be resolved there.
An appeals court has thrown out a challenge to a judgment awarding a cryptocurrency trader $1.96 million in cash and a property purchased for $1.5 million over a deal with a convicted fraudster involving “millions of dollars of cash in bags and suitcases”.
Apple has reached the end of the line in its attempts to move a competition dispute with Fortnite game maker Epic Games to California, with the High Court denying the tech company’s special leave application to appeal a judgment that found there were “strong reasons” for keeping the matter in Australia.
Specialist workplace relations consultancy Employsure has been ordered to pay a $1 million penalty over a series of misleading Google advertisements, a figure significantly lower than the $5 million sought by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission.
Law firm Norton Rose Fulbright has won its appeal of a $160,000 judgment in favour of former partner Thomas Martin, with the Full Federal Court finding Martin’s allegations of deceit arose from “an excess of suspicion” and “causal connections of the most tenuous kind”.
The judge who made findings against the son of the mastermind behind the Banksia class action scam may have formed strong views about the 27-year-old’s role before he testified and used the flawed suggestion that he was his father’s right-hand man as an “evidential gap filler”, an appeals court has been told.
A judge has questioned property developer PPK Group’s challenge to the dismissal of its long-running negligence case against HWL Ebsworth over the $25.5 million sale of Crown-owned land in Sydney.
Melbourne-based joint venture Shepparton Partners Collective has lost its appeal of a $1.2 million judgment that found it infringed software developer QAD’s copyright by failing to pay a transfer fee to retain the licence after it acquired the iconic SPC Ardmona cannery in Victoria from Coca-Cola Amatil for $40 million.
Two former barristers ordered to pay at least $21.7 million in damages and costs for their role in a fraudulent scheme to pocket a windfall from the Banksia Securities class action have filed for bankruptcy.