A unit of telecommunications contractor Tandem has lost an appeal in its fight over the validity of a sham contracting class action by technicians alleging they were misclassified as contractors and wrongly denied benefits.
The judge overseeing a class action against Westpac over superannuation fees has criticised costly discovery processes that produce a “tsunami of material”, most of which is never used at trial.
An IOOF subsidiary sued over “bad advice” has failed in its bid to stop ASIC from using documents from the banking royal commission as evidence in the case, with a judge saying the company had already provided the material to the financial watchdog without objection.
BHP has failed in a bid to shut down a class action over the Fundao dam failure pending criminal proceedings in Brazil, with a judge ruling the mining giant would not be prejudiced if the case proceeded for now.
IT giant Hewlett-Packard Australia has been ordered to pay over $370,000 in unpaid commissions to a former sales executive after a court found the company could not change its incentives “arbitrarily, capriciously or unreasonably”.
A judge overseeing a consolidated class action against four AMP subsidiaries and two trustees over allegedly excessive superannuation fees has ordered the respondents to coordinate after the lead applicants raised concerns about duplication of work.
Two Westpac units have defended their choice to charge higher superannuation fees, saying in their responses to a Slater and Gordon class action that customers received numerous positive benefits in exchange for the charges.