Judgment

Maurice Blackburn has defeated a former client’s bid for summary judgment in an “unusual case” alleging the firm gave him bad advice concerning a personal injury claim against the state of Western Australia over assaults suffered in prison.

Mining engineering company Destec has won its bid to use evidence produced in a dispute with Mineral Resources in considering whether to bring a new case against its former director over a lucrative transportation system.

Online trading company CMC Markets has succeeded in accessing advice given to class action members who are seeking to recover 10 years’ worth of “significant” losses incurred while trading risky financial products on its mobile and web-based platforms.

Real estate investment trust NorthWest can amend its pleadings in a lawsuit alleging one of the country’s largest unlisted healthcare property funds conspired to prevent it from acquiring a controlling stake, but has come up short in its bid to add to its claims against property giant Dexus.

A judge has declined Expert Group’s bid to bring court proceedings about the amount of an earn-out owed under its agreement to sell cloud services provider Experteq IT Services, finding the firm had agreed to resolve the matter by expert determination.

The founders of farming charity Aussie Helpers have won a defamation case against a Victorian woman who made allegedly defamatory comments on Facebook that claimed they committed criminal fraud by using donations for personal purchases.

A former director of defunct mining and exploration company Continental Coal has been sentenced to eight months’ imprisonment for failing to act in good faith in performing his directors’ duties in relation to $1 million in bridging finance.  

A judge has approved a $5 million class action settlement against payment processor Tyro over a service outage but has shredded the proposed funder payout and legal fees that would have comprised 60 per cent of the sum, calling the costs “outrageous”. 

New Zealand honey producers have failed in a lengthy fight with their Aussie counterparts to trade mark the term ‘manuka honey’, with the Intellectual Property Office of New Zealand ruling the phrase is merely descriptive of a type of honey.

An appeals court has said that while it might be desirable for law firms to disclose their involvement in drafting expert reports, they are not legally obligated to do so, overturning a finding that Corrs Chambers Westgarth went “far beyond the permissible scope” of involvement in a report prepared for a trade secrets case.