Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young, who is suing fellow senator David Leyonhjelm for defamation, has asked a court for the costs of having her lawyers appear at a hearing for which his side failed, without explanation, to appear.
Law firms Maurice Blackburn and Phi Finney McDonald have stepped back from a proposed consolidation of their class actions against the Commonwealth Bank of Australia and want to run their own cases again, but now with “harmonised” pleadings.
A judge has recommended another shareholder vote over Boart Longyear’s plan to move to Canada, saying a letter by a minority shareholder warning the move could imperil a possible class action against the distressed mining services company was misleading and affected the integrity of the vote.
Claims by Wyeth that its patented Prevnar 13 pneumococcal vaccine was inventive because other pharmaceutical giants had failed in developing similar vaccines are based on “hearsay and speculation,” Merck Sharp & Dohme told the court during closing submissions in the high-stakes trial over the world’s best-selling vaccine.
Common fund orders are the completion of the notion of class actions envisaged when the regime was introduced 27 years ago, a joint-sitting of two appeals courts was told on the second and last day of a landmark challenge to what has become an oft-used case management tool by trial judges.
The ABC has called for a “clearer articulation” of former managing director Michelle Guthrie’s unfair sacking claims against the broadcaster ahead of court-ordered mediation.
The judge overseeing a class action against Ethicon over allegedly faulty pelvic mesh implants has shot down the device maker’s bid for a class closure order.
Accounting firm Pitcher Partners will challenge a ruling that it owes a NSW bus operator $5.6 million in damages for fraudulently concealing a costly amortisation error.
An appeal before a historic joint sitting of two courts over so-called common fund orders in class actions kicked off Monday with a full bench of six judges and a packed courtroom hearing arguments by eminent barristers for BMW and Westpac that the orders are either preemptive or pointless.
Deloitte is challenging a judge’s ruling that certain partners not be excused from an order to produce files of the accounting giant’s audit work for Hastie Group to shareholders in a class action over the construction company’s collapse, its latest move after a failed attempt to persuade the judge that a rogue partner had taken the only copies of the files and refused to give them back.