Steven Finch

The High Court has upheld appeals in class actions against Ford and Toyota over the calculation of damages for reduction in value of defective vehicles.

AUSTRAC has taken The Star to task for making statements that are inconsistent with admissions the casino has made in the regulator’s case over its alleged failure to comply with its money laundering obligations.

Deciding an “unusually difficult” costs application, a judge has declined to award Monsanto all of its costs for defending a class action alleging its Roundup weed killer is carcinogenic, saying the agrochemical giant should have pushed harder for a split trial. 

Plaintiff firm Maurice Blackburn will foot the bill for the unsuccessful class action against Monsanto over weed killer Roundup, but the company’s reluctance to split the trial in two has come back to bite it.

A judge has dismissed a class action alleging Monsanto’s Roundup weed killer is carcinogenic but did not go so far as to say it definitively does not cause cancer, while also dressing down the lawyers for both sides for causing delays in the case.

The Australian Communications and Media Authority says a coding error on a dormant website that went undetected for four years was behind a massive data breach that exposed the information of close to 10 million Optus customers, with the regulator saying the hack was “not highly sophisticated”. 

A judge overseeing several cases against Optus over a September 2022 data breach has raised the possibility of hearing a class action against the telco alongside new proceedings brought by the Australian Communications and Media Authority.

Optus has lost its appeal of a decision that found the telco could not claim legal professional privilege over a Deloitte report into a major data breach, with an appeals court highlighting the lack of evidence from former CEO Kelly Bayer Rosmarin.

Two law firms behind underpayments class actions against Kentucky Fried Chicken have dodged a contest to run the litigation, agreeing to join their cases alleging the fast food giant denied tens of thousands of workers rest breaks.

Victoria’s Peninsula Health has abandoned an appeal of a ruling in a class action that found it breached workplace laws by failing to pay overtime to a junior doctor, a capitulation that could be a game changer for a series of class actions against health care providers.