A judge has approved a $5.8 million settlement in an underpayments class action against convenience store chain On The Run despite what she said was the class action law firm’s “extraordinary” reason for reaching the deal.
From the ongoing saga of the high-profile Christian Porter action against the ABC to “backyard” litigation testing the serious harm bar, defamation cases made headlines in 2022, with winners and losers alike shelling out millions to lawyers to protect their reputations.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has begun a sweep of social media sweep over concerns about “manipulative marketing techniques” employed by influencers.
The Australian Law Reform Commission has recommended the government abolish exceptions for religious schools in federal anti-discrimination legislation, but permit schools to give preference to prospective applicants on religious grounds.
A judge has found Nine should not face an out-of-time defamation action over an allegedly defamatory episode of A Current Affair that aired in 2019.
A judge has found Downer Energy was responsible for a costly shutdown at a NSW power plant caused by a “practically unthinkable” defect.
Courts stepped up their scrutiny of class action settlements in 2022, with judges grappling with difficult issues such as funding commissions in employment cases and whether settlements, even those worth hundreds of millions of dollars, were fair to group members.
Two former staffers of senator Jacqui Lambie who represented themselves in an unsuccessful unfair dismissal case have been hit with nearly $50,000 in legal costs each due to their “unreasonable conduct” in the case, including attempts to turn the proceeding into “a trial by media.”
Regenerative medicine company Mesoblast has hit back at a shareholder class action over its Remestemcel-L treatment for COVID-19, saying that some group members are barred from bringing claims because of a settlement reached in a US class action.
In one of the first cases to test a new ‘serious harm’ threshold for defamation matters, a judge has knocked back a NSW house painter’s defamation case over a one star Google review, saying that people would consider “unflattering” business reviews to be expressions of personal opinion.
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