Australia’s leading livestock group cannot block US company Branhaven from amending its application for a bovine genome patent, which the group has worried could harm the Australian cattle industry’s ability to use genetic tests.
Fifty horse owners may face cross-examination regarding adverse effects allegedly caused by Zoetis’ Hendra virus vaccine, with the company warning a four-week hearing scheduled to begin in March may be insufficient to deal with the horse owners’ evidence.
The Murray Goulburn class action run by Elliott Legal bears similarities to the Banksia class action, a case rife with scandal and offered up by opponents as proof of the problems with the class action regime. The leading lawyers were the same in both cases. In one they have abandoned any claim to their fees and have walked away from their careers. In the other they walked away with $5 million.
Pharmaceutical company Boehringer Ingelheim has failed in its Federal Court challenge to a patent application for an injectable anti-parasite drug for livestock by a subsidiary of competitor Merck Sharp & Dohme.
Sustainable technology company Papyrus Australia has reached a settlement with its former CEO in a defamation case that alleged the omission of his name in the company’s 2018 annual report was akin to calling him a liar.
A judge has signed off on a $10.5 million settlement in a class action over the 2015 Scotsburn bushfire in Victoria, but slashed the costs of the law firm that brought the case by over $1 million.
Two insurance companies have been joined as respondents to a class action against forestry giant Gunns over the failure of six managed investment schemes for eucalyptus wood in Tasmania.
Fonterra could bring counter-claims against dairy farmers that brought a class action alleging they were unpaid when the company slashed milk prices in 2016, a court has heard, after debt recovery proceedings by Fonterra against the lead applicants were joined with the class action.
The Federal Government will not challenge a ruling in a class action brought on behalf of live exporters which found a total ban on live cattle exports to Indonesia in 2011 was “capricious and unreasonable”.
A litigation funder’s average rate of return on its investment in shareholder class actions was one of a number of factors weighed by a judge in approving a 25 per cent funding cut from the $42 million settlement in a class action against dairy cooperative Murray Goulburn.