Judges

A judge has hit caravan manufacturer Jayco with a $75,000 penalty in proceedings launched by the ACCC, finding the company made a false or misleading representation to a customer about their consumer guarantee rights.

The Western Australian state government has hit back at a class action brought by Indigenous workers seeking to recover unpaid wages, saying there was no breach of duty because the law at the time allowed the workers to be employed without pay.

ASIC has won a $20 million judgment against derivative trader Forex CT for using “unfair” sales tactics and misleading clients into making trades from which the company would benefit even when they had informed their adviser they had limited financial resources.

A $440 million settlement by the State of Queensland and dam operator Sunwater resolving a class action over the 2011 Queensland floods has been approved by a NSW judge.

A unit of coal mining company Futura Resources has failed to convince the Full Federal Court to allow it to register a 2012 coking coal mine investigation conducted in Central Queensland for a research and development tax offset.

Qantas has secured a temporary injunction from a Singapore court blocking a former company executive from starting a new position at competitor Virgin Australia.

The Australian Law Reform Commission has suggested judges should transfer applications for their own disqualification to a separate duty judge to decide, after hearing concerns about how the "bias blind spot" may operate in the existing self-disqualification procedure.

A director of Gold Coast accounting firm Oculus has lost his bid to represent the company in a class action by investors in failed music streaming platform Guvera, with a judge unconvinced the company lacked the means to fund the litigation and finding the director was not suitable to represent the company.

The judge overseeing the first ever bid for a group costs order in a class action that will give the plaintiff's law firm a percentage cut of the proceeds has urged the firm to rethink characterising its own solicitor as an expert.

A judge has ordered mining magnate Clive Palmer to pay damages of $1.5 million to Universal Music for his “contemptuous” behaviour in infringing "substantial parts" of Twisted Sister's 1985 heavy metal hit 'We're Not Gonna Take It' in advertisements for his political party.