The Commonwealth can be held criminally responsible for damage to First Nations sacred sites in the Northern Territory, the High Court has unanimously found in a case over construction damage to Gunlom Falls in Kakadu National Park.
The High Court has held that a contractor had a “prima facie entitlement” to recoup the costs of building an aircraft hangar in Cessnock, NSW, which it spent in reliance on the local government performing its obligations under their contract, in a case that clarifies how courts should assess reliance damages claims.
The High Court had been asked to clarify the extent of protection for employers for genuine redundancies under the Fair Work Act, after an appeals court found the exemption was “not absolute”.
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.
A recently appointed High Court judge has warned against state and federal courts competing to attract cases, expressing concerns the appearance of impartiality could be compromised if courts sought to “drum up business at the expense of defendants”.
The Full High Court will sit for the hearing of KPMG’s battle to transfer a Victoria class action to Sydney, as the applicant in the case raises a question as to the constitutional validity of the firm’s argument that the NSW Supreme Court is bound to keep a group costs order operative.
The High Court is set to weigh in on a challenge to a precedent-setting decision that found breaches of statutory duty under a provision of the Design and Building Practitioners Act are not apportionable, in a case with significant ramifications for the NSW construction industry.
The High Court has agreed to hear a case with implications for law firms that represent themselves in litigation, granting an appeal application by media mogul Bruce Gordon, a former client of Sydney firm Atanaskovic Hartnell.
How to tell if a judge is buried under a mountain of outstanding judgments? Their mood will say it all. A sure-fire way to prolong that hearing with a vexatious litigant? Engage them in dialogue. Here, Lawyerly shares a High Court judge’s war stories and tips for new members of the bench. But what weight to give them? That’s a matter for you, he says.
The competition regulator has asked the High Court to correct the Full Court’s alleged error in overturning a finding that builder J Hutchinson and the union for construction workers violated competition laws by agreeing to boycott an independent subcontractor at a Brisbane building site.