Events

The ACCC has reached the end of the line in its challenge to Pacific National's $205 million acquisition of Aurizon's Acacia Ridge Terminal in Queensland, with the High Court dismissing the competition regulator's application to take up the appeal.

The columnist behind two allegedly defamatory Australian Financial Review articles has told the court that he believed former Blue Sky managing director Dr Elaine Stead was "cretinously stupid" because of her "astonishingly ridiculous" behavior on social media at the time of the company's collapse.

Convenience store chain 7-Eleven has asked the High Court to find courts do not have the power to make common fund orders at settlement or judgment in a class action, one year after the High Court ruled common fund orders could not be made in the early part of a representative proceeding.

Nine-owned Fairfax has denied that two Australian Financial Review articles implied that venture capitalist Dr Elaine Stead "deliberately" destroyed capital, as it seeks to significantly reduce the defamation case it faces.

The Sydney Opera House is challenging a ruling that denied its opposition to a trade mark application filed by a China-Australia trade association that featured an image of the opera house sails together with the Great Wall of China.

A judge hearing Pfizer's application for preliminary discovery against Sandoz over its possible launch of an Enbrel biosimilar has found that such an application must be based on a current belief that the applicant could be entitled to relief.

The son of Banksia Securities class action funder Mark Elliott questioned his father on whether it was "right" to rip up a $64 million settlement with the collapsed lender's trustee if the deal didn't guarantee him a $12.8 million commission, a court has heard.

Lawyer Alex Elliott has told a judge he didn't know when he postdated cheques for members of the Banksia class action legal team that it was done to mislead the appeals court in the case, but has admitted that in hindsight "it doesn't look good".

Venture capitalist Dr Elaine Stead has taken the stand in a high-profile defamation case against the Nine-owned Fairfax, saying that she felt "shame, embarrassment, humiliation and guilt" over two allegedly defamatory Australian Financial Review articles about her role in the collapsed investment firm Blue Sky.

An employment partner with Norton Rose Fulbright, who has been referred by a judge to the legal watchdog for possible professional misconduct in a case by a former colleague, is under scrutiny in a second Fair Work suit, this time for allegedly destroying evidence.