With truth on its side, Nine’s defeat of soldier Ben Roberts-Smith’s lawsuit was a huge win for investigative journalism in Australia, but while it might make lawyers blink before bringing defamation cases, the victory is not a game-changer, experts say.
As the spotlight on class action costs grows, litigation funders can expect increased judicial scrutiny of their attempts to pass on the cost of after-the-event insurance premiums to class action members.
The tax leaks scandal engulfing PwC has shone a spotlight on the culture of large professional services firms, where ensuring compliance with good governance is akin to “herding cats”, experts say.
A fed-up judge has vented his frustration with the problem of competing class actions in a move that appears to punish the second filed case against Medibank. But is he right that the courts are increasingly being asked to deal with duplicative proceedings? And was his order really all that drastic?
A recent decision by the Federal Court that questioned whether the introduction of a serious harm test in defamation law could infringe the Judiciary Act has shone a light on the need for a federal defamation framework, legal experts say.
With legal practices shaping up as a ripe target for cyberattacks, experts say many firms have a long way to go in implementing best practice cybersecurity to avoid potentially “catastrophic” outcomes.
An infringement ruling against US singer Katy Perry in a case brought by an Australian fashion designer is a “win for the little guy”, experts say, showing that fame doesn’t give celebrities a blank cheque to exploit their brand at the expense of someone’s else’s registered trade mark.
Reforms that would make lawyers subject to the anti-money laundering and counter terrorism financing regime have received mixed reviews from legal professionals, with one expert saying the regime was a “blunt instrument” and could put lawyers in an ill-suited policing role.
Senior restructuring and insolvency lawyers have welcomed a novel ruling that found a liquidator was entitled to claim his costs ahead of the preferred claims of company employees, but questions remain about the “potentially difficult” interaction between two conflicting priority regimes.
Approved settlements in class actions since the regime was enacted are set to top $8 billion this year, according to a new report ranking the busiest litigation funders, which found most class action mega settlements were not funder backed.