A judge has approved a $25 million settlement in a class action against a group of surgeons who worked for the Cosmetic Institute, including a $8.9 million payout for the lawyers that ran the seven-year-old case, saying the deduction from the settlement was reasonable given the “very significant discount” applied to the legal bill.
A Melbourne car dealer has largely lost a consumer law case against Honda Australia over its decision to abandon a dealership model, but is set to receive compensation for over 2,600 new vehicles it could have sold if Honda hadn’t ended its five-year contract early.
The Australian Securities and Investments Commission has prevailed in its case against payday lenders Cigno and BSF Solutions alleging they provided credit without a licence, with a judge rejecting their argument that their loan model was analogous to buy now, pay later arrangements that don’t require a credit licence.
A class action against Toyota alleging it installed diesel defeat devices in several models of its vehicles has lost a bid to access source code for the cars’ emissions control systems, with a judge finding it was not relevant to any current fact in issue.
South Korean biotech ToolGen has won court approval to patent its genome editing technology CRISPR, after an earlier bid to protect its IP found the revolutionary technology was not patentable.
A New South Wales developer’s competition case against NSW Ports over a ports privatisation agreement looks bound for the High Court after a judge found a related ACCC proceeding did not bar it from bringing the case, which will challenge a Full Court finding that the ports operator was shielded by derivative Crown immunity.
An appeals court has found that a solicitor’s caveat over his bankrupt client’s property was valid, after the client agreed to mortgage his property as security for up to $100,000 in legal costs, saying it was the only binding costs agreement they had.
Ramsay Health Care has won a partial interim injunction banning the union representing its nurses from running ads that claim the private hospital operator runs on a staff-to-patient ratio double that of public hospitals.
Sydney Trains can’t unilaterally direct engineering workers to wear long pants while working but must carry out its obligation to consult with them first, Fair Work Commission has said.
Victoria Attorney-General Jaclyn Symes’ interference in a Fire Rescue Victoria union dispute was not “unlawful, unconscionable or illegitimate”, despite the AG overstepping her statutory authority, a judge has found.