Judges

Oil exploration company PTTEP has argued 15,000 Indonesian seaweed farmers who brought a class action alleging their crops were damaged after an oil spill in the Timor Sea will need to individually persuade the court to allow their claims out of time.

A judge has allowed four ex-Linchpin directors facing possible fines by ASIC to put off filing evidence or amended defences in an investor class action after they claimed it would put them at risk of penalty in the corporate regulator’s proceedings.

A judge has rejected a bid by chain logistics company Brambles to allow two of its US-based witnesses to appear remotely at an upcoming trial in a shareholder class action, saying the executives should make the trip or give no evidence.

Officials at the Mercedes-Benz Australia head office referred to car dealers as “baby piglets” in internal communications and threatened and bullied the retailers, a trial court has been told in a $650 million lawsuit over the car maker’s decision to move to a fixed-price agency model.

A judge has given a “judicial harrumph” to Sydney developer FKP Commercial Developments and Irish insurer Zurich Insurance in a dispute over coverage for an apartment defects suit, saying it was not for the court to “trawl” through an insurance policy to work out its meaning. 

A court has awarded Western Australia premier Mark McGowan and mining billionaire Clive Palmer paltry sums in their defamation battle, with a judge finding that Palmer suffered “very little damage” to his reputation.

A judge was wrong to find that Mazda’s treatment of customers with faulty vehicles was appalling but not unconscionable, and nowhere in his ruling is there an explanation for the distinction, the consumer regulator has told an appeals court.

A lawyer has had his name struck off the roll for misconduct that “represented a gross departure from proper professional standards,” including making false claims for Legal Aid disbursements.

Slater & Gordon has defeated Shine Lawyers in a contest to run a shareholder class action against Beach Energy, with a judge finding Shine’s tiered contingency fee arrangement was “mere window dressing”.

Bell Potter has defeated a lawsuit by Nicholas Bolton’s Keybridge Capital over a 2015 phone call which lasted one minute and 18 seconds in which the investment firm was accused of committing its client to buy $10 million worth of shares in defunct Molopo Energy.