Law firm HWL Ebsworth has dodged a $424,000 damages claim by a Brisbane property developer, despite a judge finding the law firm was negligent in failing to properly follow its client’s instructions on a contract of sale for large block of units.
La Trobe Financial Asset Management will pay just $750,000 for misleading investors in its 48 hour and 90 day notice accounts over a period of more than three years, with a judge saying the company would have faced a penalty “well in excess” of this amount if not for reassuring correspondence from ASIC during its investigation.
Twitter, Facebook and other social media companies may soon be required to reveal the identity of users who post defamatory comments on their platforms, or risk being sued for defamation.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has appointed an esteemed Herbert Smith Freehills competition partner who defeated some of the regulator’s most high-profile merger challenges to be a commissioner.
Money transfer business Vina Money Transfer and two of five individuals accused of fixing foreign exchange rates on millions of dollars transferred between Australia and Vietnam will plead guilty to criminal cartel charges, a court has heard.
Former Slater & Gordon managing director Andrew Grech has told the Federal Court he regretted his “catastrophic error” in approving the $1.2 billion acquisition of Quindell’s professional services division, which resulted in massive losses for the plaintiffs law firm.
Law firm Arnold Bloch Leibler will part with $28 million in its settlement with Slater & Gordon shareholders over advice ahead of the plaintiffs firm’s disastrous $1.2 billion Quindell acquisition.
A judge has dressed down ASIC over the handling of its action against GetSwift, criticising the regulator’s failure to seek a court injunction to prevent the company’s relocation to Canada.
Law firm Norton Rose Fulbright has won its appeal of a $160,000 judgment in favour of former partner Thomas Martin, with the Full Federal Court finding Martin’s allegations of deceit arose from “an excess of suspicion” and “causal connections of the most tenuous kind”.
The judge who made findings against the son of the mastermind behind the Banksia class action scam may have formed strong views about the 27-year-old’s role before he testified and used the flawed suggestion that he was his father’s right-hand man as an “evidential gap filler”, an appeals court has been told.
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