Judgment

Senior restructuring and insolvency lawyers have welcomed a novel ruling that found a liquidator was entitled to claim his costs ahead of the preferred claims of company employees, but questions remain about the “potentially difficult” interaction between two conflicting priority regimes.

A judge won’t stay a reference process which US company Fluor claims is infected with bias, in a “monumental” dispute with energy giant Santos that has already generated a $57.5 million legal bill for the engineering firm.

A judge has approved a $50.45 million settlement in a class action by family members and deceased estates of the Northern Territory Stolen Generations. He has also approved a 13 per cent funding commission by way of a common fund order, saying debates about CFOs had become “lost in the label”.

In a novel decision, a judge has found that a liquidator is entitled to claim his “arguably disproportionate” costs ahead of the preferred claims of company employees.

Coffee brand Vittoria can’t transfer a case over the trade mark for rival Moccona’s instant coffee jar from one Federal Court registry to another, with a judge reminding the company that the court was “well into the 21st century” and could livestream hearings without the need for interstate travel.

The builder of an allegedly defective Haymarket apartment building has lost an appeal of a decision which found that separate breaches of statutory building warranties do not create individual causes of action.

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.