A judge has rejected the Australian Taxation Office’s claim that legal professional privilege does not apply to any communications between PricewaterhouseCoopers and its client, meat processor JBS, but has found that many of the reviewed documents do not satisfy the test of privilege.
Noumi, formerly known as Freedom Foods, has agreed to pay $860,000 in Blue Diamond Growers’ costs as part of a $48 million settlement of a legal spat over a licensing deal to sell Almond Breeze milk, which the food maker unsuccessfully argued should be heard in Australia.
Grain producer Viterra will be ordered to pay Cargill Australia $168.9 million after a judge found the Glencore-owned company misrepresented the performance capabilities of malt producer Joe White when it sold the company for $420 million in 2013.
Food giant Cargill Australia has won its lawsuit against Glencore-owned Viterra alleging it misrepresented the performance capabilities of malt producer Joe White when it sold the company for $420 million in 2013.
Assessing claims of privilege involving multidisciplinary firms like PricewaterhouseCoopers that offer legal and accounting services is “inherently awkward”, a court heard on the final day of a hearing in a privilege battle between the accounting firm and the ATO.
A PwC partner who the ATO claims was assigned to work on a matter for meat processing company JBS to bring a “cloak of legal privilege” kept a supporting role on the brief despite the company CFO’s dissatisfaction, a court has heard.
A PwC partner who the ATO claims was assigned to work on a matter for meat processing company JBS to bring a “cloak of legal privilege” earned hundreds of dollars less per hour than his non-lawyer assistants, a court has heard.
Meat processing company and former PricewaterhouseCoopers client JBS has slammed as a “nightmare to the rule of law” a claim by the Commissioner of Taxation that the accounting giant’s internal protocols destroyed the company’s lawyer-client relationship.
Accounting giant PricewaterhouseCoopers used one of its legally qualified partners as a “postbox” to provide a “cloak of privilege” to work conducted for meat processing company JBS, the Commissioner of Taxation has told the Federal Court.
PricewaterhouseCoopers has objected to swathes of evidence from the Commissioner of Taxation being included in an upcoming trial over privilege, claiming the material oversteps a process put in place by the court to only examine a small sample of documents.