The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has signed an information sharing agreement with four competition regulators around the globe that will boost its current and future investigations into Google and Facebook.
In what is shaping up to be a big bun fight, McDonald’s is taking long time rival Hungry Jack’s to court for trade mark infringement, accusing it of violating its legendary ‘Big Mac’ mark.
A custody battle in the Family Court will be reheard after an appeals court ruled the judge overseeing the matter was “hectoring, insulting, belittling, sarcastic and rude” to lawyers representing the father in the case.
The judge overseeing professional misconduct claims against lawyers in the Banksia class action appeared to express “a very dim view” of Alex Elliott, the son of class action lawyer Mark Elliott, and should not hear the case against him, a court has heard.
Fintech company iSignthis has upped its demand for damages in a lawsuit against ASX for a second time, filing documents with the Federal Court that claim the market operator’s decision to suspend its shares has cost it almost half a billion dollars.
Shine Lawyers and the union backing Australia’s fast food workers are investigating claims against McDonald’s after the Federal Court ruled against a “reckless” franchisee who threatened to bar employees from toilet breaks.
Maurice Blackburn is pushing back against an appeal by Treasury Wine Estates, which accuses the law firm and a barrister of breaching their obligations by using evidence discovered in a settled class action to launch a second case against the wine maker.
A judge has signed off on a $95 million settlement in a shareholder class action against Spotless after a heated exchange saw the funders backing the lawsuit drop their bid for $1.5 million in costs above their commission.
A self-represented James Mawhinney, the director of troubled Mayfair 101 director, has accused ASIC in court of misleading the judge in an ex-parte application brought in August that saw provisional liquidators appointed to the investment firm and Mawhinney banned from transferring assets out of Australia.
The public hearings before the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Corporations and Financial Services as part of an inquiry into litigation funding and regulation of the class action industry proved to be polarised and, at times, hostile and adversarial in tone. But the inquiry has proven to be a useful and insightful process and questioning by the Committee served to unearth not only relevant factual information and important empirical data but also touched on the commercial and financial interests of those on both sides of the debate.
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