Judgment

Russia has lost its High Court challenge to the federal government’s decision to terminate its lease on a site where it intended to build a new embassy in Canberra, but the court found the Commonwealth must pay the country reasonable compensation. 

Waste management firm Veolia has agreed to pay $1 million after admitting that it failed to use required odour source controls for its landfill site in Hampton Park, Victoria.

Billboard company Manboom has suffered a loss in its case against Jemena Gas alleging the presence of underground gas infrastructure at a site in Mascot, NSW that supplies gas to 1.6 million customers amounts to trespassing.

A Sydney developer has won a dispute with the Inner West Council over its Annandale housing project application, despite a court finding it would cause a loss of affordable housing. 

The NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal has given the operator of the Ibis Sydney Airport hotel in Mascot another chance to seek a liquor licence, finding a deferred commencement condition did not mean a development consent was not 'in force'.

SkyCity has lost its bid to dismiss a claim by a former employee who alleges he was discriminated against because he was a parent of a newborn child and dismissed because he made whistleblower reports. 

A defunct design firm has been found guilty of health and safety violations after a shoring wall fell down at a Geocon construction site in Canberra, with a magistrate saying the collapse could have caused multiple deaths. 

An adjudicator’s decision awarding $10 million to a builder on Queensland developer Heran Group’s high-rise luxury apartment building in Main Beach lacked procedural fairness after he went outside the parties’ submissions, a judge has found. 

A builder has lost an appeal arguing that a RW Capital unit was bound by an alleged contract to develop land in northern Sydney, said to be worth $25.75 million, after the trial judge found the claim was “doomed to fail”.

The lead plaintiffs in a lawsuit against Transport for New South Wales over the compulsory acquisition of land for the WestConnex road project have won their bid to toss a third suit brought by the funder which backed the case.