Fossil fuel giant Shell Australia has partially won a challenge to a tax office decision denying deductions claimed over an acquisition the increased the company’s stake in Woodside Energy’s Browse Basin gas exploration joint venture project.
Several banks and executives facing criminal cartel charges over a $2.5 billion ANZ share placement have won access to interview notes taken by whistleblower JP Morgan prior to it being granted immunity, which the banks say will prove inconsistencies in the prosecution’s case.
Lawyers welcomed the government’s “overdue” announcement of a so-called patent box that will slash the tax rate on income derived from patented drug and biotech inventions developed in Australia, but called on the government to apply the regime to other sectors.
A Federal Court judge has ordered that a referee consider how junior barristers were used in assessing the legal costs in an insurance class action against Westpac which the bank has agreed to pay up to $30 million to settle.
Westpac has agreed to pay up to $30 million to settle a long-running class action over allegedly excessive insurance premiums which included a trip to the High Court that resulted in common fund orders being struck down in the early stages of class actions.
The companies behind the top selling Abilify medication have lost their latest bid for documents from the Commonwealth in a multimillion dollar dispute over the delayed listing of generic versions of their drug, with a judge saying the material could be only “of the most marginal relevance”.
A Federal Court class action against two NAB units over $6.3 billion in super funds is on hold after lawyers for the applicant filed an appeal of a ruling that found their state court proceeding had been invalidly commenced.
The judge who vowed last year to move a criminal cartel case over a $2.5 billion ANZ share placement to trial “before we all retire” will soon weigh the ACCC’s claim for privilege over statements from JPMorgan witnesses it has been accused of pressuring during its investigation, two months after a different judge heard a still unresolved privilege fight in the long-running case.
Allens’ response to a complaint of sexual harassment in the firm’s Brisbane office five years ago may have breached the federal Work Health and Safety Act, a new report has suggested.
Big Six firm Allens allowed a senior lawyer to stay on at the firm for five weeks after a sexual harassment incident in 2012, the third such event at the law firm to be disclosed in the past month.