While there was no shortage of pain and challenges for law firms as the coronavirus raged across the globe last year, a number of big firms also felt the sting of litigation from disgruntled clients, partners and employees.
Shock jock Alan Jones has reached a settlement in his defamation lawsuit against SBS and The Feed presenter Alex Lee over a television segment that referred to him as someone who “spoke to the fears of every xenophobe and misogynist in the country”.
Evidence of an outdated management approach and bullying — which included threatening defamation proceedings against two junior lawyers that complained about her — appear to be responsible for the ousting of a former senior Piper Alderman partner, not her sex, a judge has found.
A former Piper Alderman partner has lost her bid to bring sex discrimination claims against the partners of the law firm, but can still proceed with her other claims.
The former CEO of Commonwealth Bank subsidiary Beem It was dismissed for blowing the whistle on multiple conflicts of interest by directors of the digital payment company, just months after she was warned by one director that the “CBA wagons” were circling her, a lawsuit alleges.
The former CEO of Beem It has discontinued her legal claims against the payments fintech co-owner, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, only days after naming the bank in her lawsuit alleging workplace breaches.
Commonwealth Bank of Australia and Beem It are facing an employment lawsuit by the former CEO of the payments fintech, but details of the case have not been released pending a bid to keep the claims confidential.
The details of a sex harassment lawsuit brought against entrepreneur Sir Owen Glenn by a former executive assistant employed with his philanthropic foundation have been kept under wraps by a judge, who said allowing public access to the statement of claim in the case could undermine the parties’ settlement.
Politicians are “rarely nice to each other” and go out of their way to harm the reputation of others, a lawyer for former Senator David Leyonhjelm has told the Full Court in appealing a $120,000 damages bill for defamatory comments he was found to have made about Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young.
Directed Electronics has slammed a decision by one of its former managers to switch lawyers in the middle of a trial over alleged corporate theft, saying the move had a “tactical flavour”.