A judge has slugged the CEO of a Sydney property development company with a $32,500 penalty for underpaying a live-in nanny, but he aimed his wrath at the media for having “wrongly branded” the businessman as someone who engaged in modern slavery.
A judge overseeing a class action against Bayer-owned Monsanto over its allegedly carcinogenic weedkiller, Roundup, has declined to rule on the admissibility of expert evidence in a hearing ahead of trial next year, despite concerns about the independence of the expert witnesses for the class.
The Commonwealth Bank of Australia has told a judge there’s no chance it will admit to ASIC’s allegations that it accepted conflicted remuneration through the sale of its Essential Super product, likening the matter to ASIC’s failed ‘Wagyu and shiraz’ case against Westpac.
Bendigo and Adelaide Bank has lost its appeal of a ruling that revoked its 22-year-old ‘community bank’ trade mark, with the Full Federal Court agreeing that the phrase has an ordinary signification and cannot be trade marked for the bank’s services.
A fight is brewing over allegedly deficient discovery provided by pop star Katy Perry in her trade mark dispute with Sydney fashion designer Katie Perry, with a judge hearing that text messages from the singer’s phone that may be relevant to the case have not been handed over.
Fortnite developer Epic Games has filed a lawsuit against Google for alleged anti-competitive conduct and misuse of market power, after launching a similar claim against Apple in November.
In another victory for ASIC in a case stemming from the banking royal commission, a judge has ruled that TAL Life Limited breached the Insurance Contracts Act after denying coverage to a cancer patient and threatening to recover $24,000 it had already paid to her.
The High Court has ruled that the tax office was not obliged to refund money for tax surpluses mistakenly issued under the GST Act, in a long-running legal dispute between the Commissioner of Taxation and foreign currency exchange Travelex.
Judges have power to manage competing class actions by picking a winner in a so-called beauty parade, the High Court has ruled, but there is no one size fits all approach to the decision, and the law firm that files first is not guaranteed the coveted prize.
The lead plaintiffs in two class actions against 7-Eleven have appealed a decision rejecting the very first Federal Court application for oral discovery, which would have seen four former employees bound by confidentiality agreements give evidence.