A Federal Court judge overseeing two franchisee class actions against 7-Eleven has heard a landmark application for pre-trial oral discovery that could create another tool for lawyers to source evidence otherwise blocked by confidentiality agreements.
Two law firms locked in a courtroom battle over their ‘C’ trade marks made up of concentric circles will move to mediation after one of the firms files “significantly more” evidence about their reputation in Melbourne, a court has heard.
HWL Ebsworth has settled with a former partner who filed a lawsuit claiming the firm and managing partner Juan Martinez failed to pay her money she was owed because she did not support the law firm’s aborted plan to go public.
A judge will not let proceedings brought by ASIC against four former Linchpin Capital directors drag on, slamming a “vague” excuse from one of the directors, who awaits word from his insurers on whether his defence costs will be covered, that London is still in a state of “total confusion” due to COVID-19.
Former Labor MP Melissa Parke has failed in her bid to strike down the honest opinion defence of Herald Sun executive Dr Colin Rubenstein in her lawsuit alleging the director defamed her in an email and article relating to her 2019 pre-selection speech.
IP Australia has rejected e-commerce giant Amazon’s patent application for a method of allocating resources in virtual computers, finding the patent’s claims were “nothing more than a scheme for scheduling work” and were not a manner of manufacture.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has raised preliminary competition concerns about the proposed merger of insurance giants Aon and Willis Towers Watson to create the world’s largest insurance provider, following investigations in the US, Europe, Canada and New Zealand.
Forty-four charges have been outlined in a long-awaited indictment in a criminal cartel case over a $2.5 billion ANZ share placement, including 29 charges against top executives from ANZ, Deutsche Bank and Citigroup.
The liquidators of retirement village group Australian Property Custodian Holdings, which went into administration in 2010 owing $948 million, have had their proposal to compensate unitholders under a global proof of debt rejected by a judge, who called the plan vague and “unsatisfactory”.
Two insurance brokers have dodged being dragged into class action proceedings against sandalwood producer Quintis to boost a settlement reached last year, as a fight over insurance owed to the company to cover the settlement continues.
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