Judgment

The High Court has dismissed a case by a law firm client who claimed he was entitled under the law of restitution to $1.4 million in interest on a $900,000 sum his lawyers repaid in a fight about legal fees.

Law firm Gillis Delaney has defeated a bid for third-party costs by a warehouse management software company that was named in an intellectual property dispute, with a judge rejecting claims the firm was not authorised to act and acted unreasonably. 

The tax commissioner has suffered a major loss in a dispute with Malaysian power company YTL Power over a $948 million capital gain from the sale of its stake in South Australia-based ElectraNet in 2022.

An adjudicator’s decision awarding $10 million to a builder on Queensland developer Heran Group’s high-rise luxury apartment building in Main Beach lacked procedural fairness after he went outside the parties’ submissions, a judge has found. 

A builder has lost an appeal arguing that a RW Capital unit was bound by an alleged contract to develop land in northern Sydney, said to be worth $25.75 million, after the trial judge found the claim was “doomed to fail”.

The lead plaintiffs in a lawsuit against Transport for New South Wales over the compulsory acquisition of land for the WestConnex road project have won their bid to toss a third suit brought by the funder which backed the case.

Suspecting infringement of patents for its Parkinson's drug, Xadago, biopharmaceutical company Newron has won preliminary discovery of documents from generic drug maker Arrotex Pharmaceuticals.

The managing director of the Australian arm of property developer Arada has lost his bid to bar a vote on his termination as he and the group's CEO sling allegations of misconduct and dishonesty. 

A Heran Group unit has lost its challenge to orders that $4.8 million be paid to a Queensland builder from an escrow account held by HWL Ebsworth amid an appeal in its dispute over a $128 million contract for beachfront apartments. 

A real estate agency in Victoria has lost a suit seeking the payment of its advertising costs from a former client, with a judge finding that writing 'TBA' in the contract defeated the consumer protection purpose of rules for real estate agents.