WorleyParsons has abandoned its mid-trial application to shut down a shareholder class action, amid uncertainty about whether the engineering company would be required to surrender its right to call reply evidence if it continued with its submission that it has no case to answer.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has failed in its challenge to a ruling that dismissed its bid-rigging case over mining exploration licences involving Cascade Coal and the sons of jailed Labor politician Eddie Obeid.
Engineering services firm CIMIC Group has attacked the pleadings in a shareholder class action against it, saying needlessly convoluted paragraphs containing a “numerically vast number of contingencies” should be struck out.
The Australian Securities and Investments Commission has filed Federal Court proceedings against Bank of Queensland and Bendigo and Adelaide Bank over alleged unfair terms in their small business contracts.
Counsel for WorleyParsons has denied the engineering firm’s attempt to end a shareholder class action mid-trial would be the start of a “brave new world” of no-case bids in representative proceedings, saying this was a rare instance of a case with “no chance of success”.
Insurance broker Jardine Lloyd Thompson is facing a second class action on behalf of local councils claiming it charged inflated premiums.
The Full Federal Court has shot down a challenge to a ruling denying horse vaccine maker Zoetis’ application for security for costs in an unfunded class action brought on behalf of horse owners alleging the company failed to warn about the potential side effects of the Hendra virus vaccine.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has taken private health insurer Medibank to court for falsely telling consumers they were not eligible for certain coverage under their insurance policies, with over 800 policy holders denied coverage for joint investigation or reconstruction procedures.
Radio Rentals and its insurer, AIG, have reached a $29 million settlement in a consumer class action alleging the company pushed misleading ‘Rent, Try, $1 Buy’ leases onto vulnerable customers.
Billionaire Lindsay Fox and property magnate Max Beck have lost a dispute over the valuation of land at their jointly operated Essendon Airport, with a judge siding with the Federal Government’s method that calculated the site’s value at $349 million, not $7.1 million as claimed by their expert.