The Australian Taxation Office has successfully appealed a Federal Court decision finding it could not recover an R&D tax offset refund of around $2.3 million paid to Auctus Resources despite the payment being made by mistake and the mining company admitting it was not entitled to the money.
Thousands of Indonesian seaweed farmers have won a class action against PTTEP Australasia over one of Australia’s largest oil spills, with a judge finding the oil exploration company breached its duty of care to the farmers and damaged their livelihoods.
The High Court will weigh in on a dispute between the Port of Newcastle and mining giant Glencore over access charges to shipping channels used to export coal from the Hunter Valley.
The High Court has rejected special leave applications by mining magnate Gina Rinehart to appeal a ruling which only partially stayed a legal dispute over ownership rights and royalties relating to the Rinehart family-owned Hope Downs iron ore mine, with one judge calling the mining magnate’s arguments a “tortured articulation” and “very odd”.
The law firm behind a long-running class action over the 2011 floods in Queensland which reached a $440 million partial settlement last month has estimated that its legal bill to date totals around $60 million.
A judge has found a group of insurers defending a $309 million lawsuit over an Australia Pacific LNG project in Central Queensland cannot be represented by two law firms, saying it would not be in the interests of justice.
Law firm Herbert Smith Freehills has attacked a lawsuit brought by a group of lenders against collapsed steel giant Arrium, rejecting claims that $430 million in loans was borrowed under misleading or deceptive representations.
The Federal Government has argued a class action against the expansion of a northern NSW mine has “conspicuously failed” to show that the emissions would contribute to “catastrophic harm”, but a judge has questioned the Commonwealth’s contention that other countries would be responsible for the emissions.
The former group treasurer of collapsed steel giant Arrium has hit back at claims brought by the company’s liquidators that it was trading while insolvent, arguing the case had been ‘infected’ by evidence from an expert who was also a plaintiff in the case.
Trial kicked off Tuesday in a landmark class action brought by teenagers seeking to halt the expansion of a Whitehaven coal mine in NSW, with the barrister for the teens arguing catastrophe was likely if the expansion was blessed by the Federal Minister for the Environment.