When it comes to briefing barristers, solicitors lie on a spectrum of awesome to irksome. In a series of interviews with Lawyerly, some of Australia’s top counsel reveal what they like and what they don’t like about their instructing lawyers.
Westpac is facing a class action over an allegedly dishonest car loan scheme that was eventually banned by the corporate regulator.
Hytera Communications has lost its latest attempt to adjourn an upcoming virtual trial in a copyright case brought by rival Motorola, despite concerns by the Chinese radio manufacturer that witnesses could be exposed to the coronavirus if forced to travel to give evidence.
A judge has slammed a lawyer for her “abysmal arrogance and sense of privilege”, ordering her to pay $300,000 to her Balmain neighbour after a long-running property dispute culminated in a defamatory interview that was broadcast to over one million TV viewers on A Current Affair.
Dam operator Seqwater is challenging a decision that put it on the hook for 50 per cent of any damages payouts to thousands of members of a long-running class action over the 2011 floods that destroyed 2,000 Queensland homes.
The co-founders of fintech company Slyp have been given a second chance to patent their digital receipts technology after IP Australia found that they “misunderstood” the advice of their previous patent lawyer.
The Australian Securities and Investments Commission has won its challenge to a tribunal ruling that overturned a permanant ban imposed on a RI Advice Group authorised financial planner who double charged his clients.
The commission rates of litigation funders have come under attack on the first day of a parliamentary inquiry into class actions, with the CEO of funder Omni Bridgeway in the firing line over a $10.5 million cut of a recent $42 million settlement in a class action against milk supplier Murray Goulburn.
A hearing in the Federal Government’s latest inquiry into class actions kicked off Monday with attacks on the credibility of one of the heads of Liberal think tank the Menzies Research Centre, who was excoriated by a Labor senator for providing “unsubstantiated” data from Herbert Smith Freehills that group members receive on average 39 per cent of class action proceeds.
Cladding manufacturer Fairview Architectural has filed for voluntary administration, citing challenges posed by COVID-19 and $1.5 million spent so far defending a class action alleging it misrepresented the quality of its “highly flammable” cladding.
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