A finding this week that Norton Rose Fulbright intentionally misled a former lawyer in an employment dispute and abused the court’s processes threatens the legal career of an equity partner at the firm and is a warning to all firms to think twice before representing themselves in cases involving soured professional relationships.
A court has ruled that an arbitration proceeding before the Fair Work Commission does not doom a Federal Court lawsuit brought by the civilian air traffic controllers union against government-owned Airservices.
A judge has declined to throw out a lawsuit brought against Qantas by a self-represented worker who was stood down, saying a “liberal and lenient” approach was needed.
Mining services company Thiess has lost its challenge to a class action ruling which found the company had underpaid workers for time spent on the bus travelling home from a Pilbara-based liquefied natural gas processing plant owned by Woodside Energy.
The Australian arm of multinational cosmetics company Lush has back-paid over 3,000 employees more than $4 million and entered into a “stringent” enforceable undertaking with the Fair Work Ombudsman.
A former Norton Rose Fulbright partner has won a long-running case over his termination, with a judge ruling the law firm had intentionally misled the lawyer and must pay him $160,000 for its deception.
A PwC director who was terminated after suffering a back injury at work has sued the accounting giant claiming that her notice of termination was invalid because it was delivered through DocuSign.
The Fair Work Ombudsman has secured its first penalties under ‘serious contraventions’ provisions of the Fair Work Act, seeing a recidivist former Han’s Café franchisee in Perth and general manager slapped with $230,000 in fines for the”cavalier” and “entirely unacceptable” underpayment of vulnerable, young migrant workers.
A McDonald’s franchisee has been ordered to pay $82,000 in penalties for systemically denying workers drink and toilet breaks and misleading them about their break entitlements, providing fuel for a class action investigation into the US fast food chain for allegedly denying workers rest breaks.
In an important ruling that confines the scope of “industrial activity” under the Fair Work Act, the Full Federal Court has overturned a $50,000 fine against the CFMEU and two officials for organising a work stoppage at a Brighton construction site that the union said needed a female toilet.