Professional Negligence

The managing partner of a leading plaintiff law firm has agreed to drop his case against a Melbourne law firm, which he claimed failed to properly advise him on an agreement that barred him from selling his shares in Slater & Gordon before the firm’s share price plummeted in 2015. 

A law firm partner who alleges a Melbourne solicitor failed to properly advise him on a share sale agreement with Slater & Gordon in 2014 declined assistance before signing a term sheet that outlined he could not sell his shares in the firm for three years, a court has heard.

An appeals court has rejected a challenge by a woman who said she was given negligent advice by her lawyers about two settlement offers which she rejected, finding that she would not have taken advice to accept the offers in any case.

The managing partner of a leading plaintiff law firm has sued a Melbourne firm, alleging it failed to properly advise him on an agreement that prevented him from selling his shares in Slater & Gordon before its share price plummeted in 2015.

Sydney-based plastic surgeon Daniel Lanzer and several of his associates have objected to a class action’s eighth attempt at getting its claims over allegedly negligent cosmetic procedures right, saying the plaintiffs were engaged in a “continuing cycle of propagating versions” of their case.

A judge has refused to allow an owners corporation to serve late expert evidence in its case against developer Mirvac over alleged defects in a Sydney apartment complex, saying a solicitor’s explanation about “competing commitments” was inadequate and “a circumstance shared by most members of the legal profession”.

A judge has thrown out a self-represented customer’s lawsuit against non-bank lender Latitude Financial after he defaulted on court orders and refused to join tech giants DXC Technology and Crowdstrike to his case over a cyberattack that compromised 14 million customer records. 

PricewaterhouseCoopers is facing a lawsuit by the executor of a deceased estate alleging the accounting firm gave negligent advice and acted with a conflict of interest while advising on tax liabilities for the deceased’s $100 million in assets.

A former HWL Ebsworth client has lost his argument that the firm must reimburse him for $22.8 million in expenses and interest after a judge found the law firm was negligent in advising on a joint venture contract for a Sydney land development, which allegedly lost him $130 million. 

The High Court has been asked to weigh in on whether a client needs to prove it could have exploited a lost commercial right in order to prevail in a law firm negligence case, after HWL Ebsworth successfully appealed a decision that found its bad advice over property in Parramatta’s ‘Auto Alley’ cost a client $2 million.