Lawyers and experts welcomed the High Court’s ruling Wednesday, which approved a class action beauty parade approach to dealing with competing proceedings and provided guidance as to how judges might otherwise manage the problem of duplicative cases. Here, Lawyerly outlines the important things to take away from the majority’s judgment.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has declared Attorney-General Christian Porter an innocent man under our law” and has no plans to remove him from his post as top law officer or seek the advice of the country’s second law officer.
MinterEllison boss Annette Kimmitt has reportedly been asked to leave the law firm after she sent a letter to staff sympathising with those upset by a senior partner’s representation of Attorney-General Christian Porter.
The Federal Court is set to determine whether artificial intelligence can be the inventor of a patent, after an AI pioneer filed a challenge to an IP Australia finding that allowing a machine to be considered an inventor would render the Patents Act incapable of “sensible operation”.
The High Court has ruled that the tax office was not obliged to refund money for tax surpluses mistakenly issued under the GST Act, in a long-running legal dispute between the Commissioner of Taxation and foreign currency exchange Travelex.
Law firm Sparke Helmore has been accused of failing to heed concerns from client Nick Scali about “escalating legal costs” in an intellectual property lawsuit, leaving the furniture retailer with “no choice” but to switch law firms.
The ACCC has secured a court-enforceable agreement from Visa that it will not tie cheap interchange rates for large retailers to their use of the Visa network for processing debit card payments, after the regulator raised concerns the credit card giant may have engaged in anti-competitive conduct.
Judges have power to manage competing class actions by picking a winner in a so-called beauty parade, the High Court has ruled, but there is no one size fits all approach to the decision, and the law firm that files first is not guaranteed the coveted prize.
As pressure mounts for the board of MinterEllison to remove the law firm’s CEO in response to a staff email apologising for a partner’s representation of the federal attorney general, legal ethics experts told Lawyerly law firms must be free to vet potential clients, and that social issues may in the future play a bigger role in deciding whether to reject matters.
Greensill Capital UK filed for insolvency in a London court on Monday after losing insurance coverage for $4.6 billion in client loans.
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