A judge has called off a pre-trial hearing to determine whether the new serious harm element in Australia’s defamation laws is satisfied in a case brought by a weight lifting coach, citing an āunfortunate turn of events”.
A judge has granted the liquidators of Cornerstone Investment Australia leave to sign a funding agreement for the insolvent tertiary education providerās $56 million professional negligence claim against accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers.
The Fair Work Ombudsman has taken the University of Melbourne to court, alleging it took adverse action against two casual academics to prevent them from claiming payment for work performed outside of their contracted hours.
PwC partners are facing “very serious” allegations that they had actual knowledge that a $30 million dividend payment to the director of now defunct tertiary education provider Cornerstone was unlawful.
The federal government wants to shut down an underpayments class action brought on behalf of postgraduate research candidates at universities across Australia, but the Federal Court has reluctantly agreed to first entertain the self-represented applicant’s bid to strike out the strike-out application.
In its first decision applying a landmark High Court judgment redefining the test for when a worker is employed, the Federal Court has found a sessional lecturer for a higher education institution was an employee.
The Fair Work Commission has overturned a finding that an Australian National University professor was unfairly fired over a 30-minute “intimate” beach encounter with a student, saying the student was unfairly cast as an āembittered seductress.ā
The National Tertiary Education Industry Union has brought proceedings against the University of the Sunshine Coast for allegedly allocating teaching and research work to academic staff that did not āaccurately reflect the time taken to do the workā.
Herbert Smith Freehills has partnered with the University of New South Wales on a practical training course for the firm’s Australian graduates that will allow them to start practicing sooner.
Catalyst Training is suing the Box Hill Institute and Centre for Adult Education over a botched subcontracting agreement, which it says the vocational education provider failed to seek government approval for.