Cindy Cameronne

The High Court has dismissed a case by a law firm client who claimed he was entitled under the law of restitution to $1.4 million in interest on a $900,000 sum his lawyers repaid in a fight about legal fees.

Developer Villawood wants to add its director’s three daughters to its case over an alleged “dishonest and fraudulent design” to divert valuable management fees for a project in Wallan, Victoria to the director’s family company.

Law firm Gillis Delaney has defeated a bid for third-party costs by a warehouse management software company that was named in an intellectual property dispute, with a judge rejecting claims the firm was not authorised to act and acted unreasonably. 

The tax commissioner has suffered a major loss in a dispute with Malaysian power company YTL Power over a $948 million capital gain from the sale of its stake in South Australia-based ElectraNet in 2022.

An adjudicator’s decision awarding $10 million to a builder on Queensland developer Heran Group’s high-rise luxury apartment building in Main Beach lacked procedural fairness after he went outside the parties’ submissions, a judge has found. 

A builder has lost an appeal arguing that a RW Capital unit was bound by an alleged contract to develop land in northern Sydney, said to be worth $25.75 million, after the trial judge found the claim was “doomed to fail”.

Isuzu has lost an appeal bid to shut down a lawsuit by car alarm company Directed Electronics over alleged trade secrets theft, after an earlier case left it with a $169 million damages bill.

CBRE has denied taking unlawful adverse action against an employee who alleges he was forced to continue working with a manager who falsely accused him of killing his rabbit and asked him which female coworkers he would have sex with. 

Engineering firm GHD Australia, which has recently been joined to a class action over a bus crash in NSW’s Hunter Valley that killed 10 passengers, has flagged bringing its own cross-claims.

Insurer Liberty Mutual has argued that CPB Contractors and John Holland's $150 million in claims in relation to Sydney's North West Rail project are largely out of time, in a lawsuit alleging the insurer breached its duty of good faith.