Barristers

Two marine freight companies have lost a fight with a local council which refused to allow it to unload 3,000 head of cattle at Apollo Bay in Victoria, with a judge finding they were “the architects of their own misfortune” for striking a deal with a beef company before securing permission to berth at the port. 

The High Court has refused special leave in a failed class action against Volkswagen over allegedly defective Takata airbags.

A former Greenwoods & Herbert Smith Freehills partner who alleges he was sacked for complaining about Lendlease’s “aggressive taxation position” has lost a bid to argue before the High Court that his claims are covered by new whistleblower protections.

South Korean biosimilars company Samsung Bioepis has sued Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen Biotech to invalidate two patents for Crohn’s disease drug Stelara, after reaching a licencing agreement over the medicine in the US.

A Melbourne orthopaedic clinic has lost its bid to register the name ‘Melbourne Bone and Joint Clinic’ as a trade mark, with a judge finding the phrase was just an ordinary combination of words. 

It’s a case of déjà vu in a class action against engineering services company Worley, with shareholders heading back to the appeals court after losing a second trial in their drawn out fight over disclosure breaches.

Sydney financier First Class Capital has admitted it acquired three million shares in former market darling Big Un but has denied liquidators’ claims that the purchase was part of a fraudulent design to inflate the share price ahead of the video start-up’s collapse.

Car repair giant AMA Group has resolved its case against three former executives that sought to block them from poaching staff and customers for competing business Drive Group. 

Telstra has won its bid to vacate a hearing in a case by former contractor Kingfisher Mobile seeking to bar the telco from migrating customers to a new mobile services provider, after a judge found Kingfisher’s delay in filing the case meant meeting the date would be unfair. 

A judge has signed off on a 27.5 per cent group costs order in a consolidated shareholder class action against Medibank over a cyberattack that affected 10 million customers, noting the “significant risk” taken on by the two plaintiff law firms running the action.