Australia’s most decorated Afghanistan war veteran Ben Roberts-Smith told a former SAS soldier that when he “blew the brains out” of a young Afghan man it was “the most beautiful thing [he’d] ever seen”, a court has heard.
A SAS sergeant testifying for Fairfax Media in the Ben Roberts-Smith’s defamation trial has admitted he told an investigative reporter the decorated veteran machine-gunned a disabled man during the war in Afghanistan, but insisted everything he said was true.
Fairfax has accused senior counsel representing Ben Roberts-Smith of using cross-examination to try to identify the source of allegedly defamatory articles that accused the former SAS soldier of war crimes.
A judge has dismissed an urgent application to block Qantas from taking disciplinary action against unvaccinated employees, but the airline has committed to extending their leave with pay until a challenge to its COVID-19 vaccination policy can be heard.
Insurers have triumphed in a lawsuit over coverage for the $3.2 million cancellation of the Big Red Bash outback music festival during the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic, with a judge finding a communicable disease exclusion in the organiser’s event cancellation policy was engaged.
Jam Land, the company co-owned by energy minister Angus Taylor, is contesting an order made by the federal Environment Department to restore 28.5 hectares of illegally poisoned native grassland.
Accounting giant KPMG is seeking the dismissal of a lawsuit brought by a former long-serving employee over “unnecessarily aggressive, belittling and disproportionate” emails allegedly attacking his professional integrity.
The maker of the popular Invisalign dental aligners has sued competitor SmileDirectClub for allegedly misleading consumers about the cost and efficacy of its direct-to-consumer teeth alignment kits.
A Sydney-based barrister has been reprimanded for relying on his “gut feeling” in making baseless accusations of misconduct against the principal of a law firm.
The New South Wales Bar Association has lost an appeal seeking a financial penalty and a professional reprimand against a Sydney barrister for his “poorly judged, vulgar and inappropriate” behaviour, with an appeals court finding damage to his reputation and a hike in his insurance premium dwarfed any punishment it could dole out.