The High Court of Australia has resolved a nearly 40-year old question of whether employees of a failed company established as trustee of a trading trust have priority over ordinary unsecured creditors.
Law firm Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan has followed through on its threat to appeal a high stakes ruling that shut down its shareholder class action against AMP, along with two competing cases, after a two-day beauty parade that saw rival firm Maurice Blackburn take the prize.
A court has trimmed 10% off a $300,000 penalty against the former CEO of failed Gold Coast finance company MFS Group, after he successfully argued his role in the misappropriation of $147.5 million in trust funds was not as an officer of the company.
The judge overseeing a dispute between Kraft and Bega over peanut butter trade dress rights has stayed orders barring Kraft from selling peanut butter in Australia featuring the disputed trade dress while it appeals its loss to Bega in the case.
AIG Australia has failed to convince the Full Federal Court that an insolvency exclusion in a directors and officers policy held by Kaboko Mining should exempt it from covering claims brought by the collapsed mining company against four former executives after a failure to repay a US$5.95 million loan allegedly led to the company’s insolvency.
The Commonwealth of Australia is preparing a special leave application to the High Court challenging a NSW Court of Appeal decision reviving a class action brought on behalf of sailors over an allegedly broken Navy training promise.
The Australian Securities and Investments Commission has narrowly lost its High Court appeal of a ruling that found the owner of a South Australian outback general store had not acted unconscionably by selling used cars through a “book-up” system.
The long-running dispute between Kraft Foods and Bega over who owns the rights to use the signature Kraft peanut butter trade dress in Australia is not over, with Kraft appealing a ruling that found Bega had acquired the rights to the trade dress when it purchased Kraft unit Mondelez’s Australian and New Zealand business in 2017.
A group of Indigenous Australians opposed to Adani’s Carmichael coal mine in Queensland have lost an eleventh hour bid to add extra grounds to their native title appeal, as they wait for a decision from the Full Federal Court.
Novartis has launched an appeal following a ruling by IP Australia that a proposed patent for an oral form of its top-selling multiple sclerosis drug Gilenya is invalid for lack of inventive step.