Judgment

The authorised representative of forex broker Union Standard can’t exclude parts of an opinion by an ASIC-appointed expert in a case alleging it traded in margin products with Chinese clients despite knowing it was illegal under Chinese law.

Award-wining architecture firm Ashton Raggatt McDougall and its former boss have agreed to pay a combined $975,000 in penalties for attempting to rig bids on a $250 million building project at Charles Darwin University.

Carnival has won its bid to strike out a class action over norovirus outbreaks on its Sun Princess cruise ship. 

Spain has lost its High Court appeal arguing it had sovereign immunity from an Australian court’s recognition of a $394 million arbitration award against the country for changes to its energy policies. 

A judge has rejected a Federal Circuit and Family Court judge’s decision to transfer a PhD student’s Fair Work lawsuit against the University of Western Australia to the Federal Court because his court does not have the proper resources to consider it. 

Beauty giant Mecca has succeeded in fending off a luxury cosmetics brand’s appeal of a decision that found a term of an exclusive distribution agreement between them was not an unlawful restraint of trade.

The NSW state racing authority has won access to communications between public relations firm Cato & Clive and five other racing bodies, including Racing Victoria, as it weighs a lawsuit alleging they plotted to exclude the body from the Australian horseracing industry. 

Gina Rinehart’s Hancock Prospecting has lost its bid to avoid producing documents to Bianca Rinehart and John Hancock after a judge rejected arguments the Rinehart children were abusing the court’s processes in a long-running dispute over ownership of a valuable mining tenement.

The Full Court has found that a policy exclusion applies in a dispute between Acciona Infrastructure and Ferrovial Construction and three insurers over coverage for loss and damage caused by heavy rainfall during the construction of the $695 million Pacific Highway in northern New South Wales.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission and Mazda have both lost their appeals in a case over the car manufacturer’s ‘appalling’ customer service, with three judges questioning the regulator’s decisions in how it ran the case.