APRA’s purely documentary case against troubled fund manager IOOF has been dismissed by the Federal Court as “unpersuasive”, “fundamentally inadequate” and “tenuous in the extreme”, in another major blow to financial services regulators pursuing action in the wake of the banking royal commission.
Silverchair frontman Daniel Johns has filed defamation proceedings against the Sunday Telegraph over an article that stated a brothel specialising in bondage had become a “second home” for the rocker.
A national Australian law firm has asked the Federal Court to throw out a sex discrimination claim filed against it by a former partner, on the grounds that no excuse had been provided for her delay in making a complaint other than “a fairly sorry story”.
A judge has permanently banned the director of financial services firm Gallop International from the industry and proposed a record $3 million fine after the corporate watchdog brought enforcement action alleging $40 million of investors’ money disappeared from Gallop’s bank account.
A judge has quietly given his seal of approval to a settlement distribution scheme in a class action against KPMG, after raising questions about Piper Alderman’s legal bill and the litigation funder’s “arguably excessive” cut of the confidential settlement.
The liquidator appointed to investigate a class action over Walton Construction’s collapse is now looking to file his own case against National Australia Bank, the company’s former director, and the restructuring firm hired before the construction company’s demise.
The Federal Government is mulling criminal penalties for the “most serious types” of wage theft, with violators facing up to ten years in jail.
The CFMEU has successfully challenged an interim Fair Work Commission order barring workers at stevedoring firm DP World from ‘go slow’ industrial action after an appeals panel found a commissioner had no power to make the original order because she miscalculated, by 7.5 hours, when she could make it.
The ACCC has issued final guidelines on how Australia’s competition laws will apply to intellectual property assignments and licences following the repeal of the ‘IP exemption’ from prohibitions on anti-competitive conduct which was contained in subsection 51(3) of the Competition and Consumer Act. As of September 13 the IP exemption no longer applies, however, certain worked examples remain undeveloped or unrealistic, such that uncertainties remain as to the ACCC’s likely approach in particular matters, writes Patrick Gay and Amalia Stone of Herbert Smith Freehills.
Prosecutors are weighing criminal charges over alleged cartel conduct the subject of a price-fixing case by the ACCC against BlueScope Steel and former general manager of sales Jason Ellis, a judge has revealed in rejecting a bid by the competition watchdog to suppress details of its case.
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