Judgment

The collapsed companies behind dumpling chain Din Tai Fung have been hit with over $3.8 million in penalties after a judge found they engaged in a “a calculated scheme to rob employees of their hard-earned wages and deceive the authorities”.

The allowance for genuine redundancies is “not absolute” and employers need to consider measures to redeploy workers, including retraining, an appeals court has said in an unfair dismissal case involving 22 mining workers.

Coal mining company Tigers Realm breached Russian sanctions over its invasion of Ukraine by transporting coal within Russia before exportation to the Asian market, a judge has found. 

A judge has ruled that HWL Ebsworth invalidly expelled a former capital partner, finding that the expulsion, which prevented him from participating in a planned float of the firm on the ASX, breached the partnership deed. 

A bid by the law firm behind a settled class action against Hays Recruitment to increase a cap on costs to settle a spat with a litigation funder has been dashed, with a judge pulling up the firm for failing to inform the court of the funder’s claim.

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission has won its first civil penalty proceeding in a greenwashing case, with a court finding against Vanguard Investments over its $1 billion “ethically conscious” hedge fund.

A judge has approved a settlement in a shareholder class action against livestock exporter Wellard that grants a 34 per cent cut for group members, saying that investors had agreed to the lawyers and funder receiving the “lion’s share”. 

In a loss for the Australian Taxation Office, an appeals court has found that the Liberty Group’s use of corporate and trust ‘silos’ was not an unlawful tax avoidance scheme.

A judge has dismissed the corporate regulator’s first-ever case over unfair insurance contracts terms, finding it was not unfair for an insurer to require customers to notify it if anything changed about their home or its contents.

A judge has set aside subpoenas in a class action against Mercedes-Benz over alleged emissions cheating seeking material to identify group members and clarify the composition of the class, finding they were not issued for a legitimate forensic purpose.