Judges

A former director of Melbourne-based developer Steller Developments has denied liquidators’ claims that he agreed to give a $120 million personal guarantee before the company went under, saying there was “not one single contemporaneous document” referring to the alleged guarantee. 

A judge has allowed Slater & Gordon to adjourn a fight about security for costs in a shareholder class action against Beach Energy until it has more favourable evidence of its debt financing position, over the energy company’s objection to the “doctrinally unprecedented” application.

The ACT government has argued the Federal Court cannot hear a class action brought on behalf of public housing tenants who were allegedly forced to relocate.

The law firm behind a class action against Insurance Australia Group has secured a group costs order that will give it 30 per cent of any proceeds — a contingency fee rate six percentage points higher than the median rate for shareholder cases.

Builder J Hutchinson and the union for construction workers have successfully appealed a finding that they unlawfully agreed to boycott an independent subcontractor at a Brisbane building site.

Mehreen Faruqi is fighting to include evidence of senator Pauline Hanson’s alleged history of ‘dehumanising’ comments on race and ethnicity in a trial over the One Nation leader’s tweet saying the deputy Greens leader should “piss off back to Pakistan”.

The Full Federal Court has found it was “abundantly clear” on the evidence before a trial judge that funeral expenses insurance provider ACBG misrepresented to Aboriginal customers that it was Aboriginal owned or managed, but found ASIC contributed to the error with its bad pleadings.

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission has won sequestration orders against Gold Coast ‘finfluencer’ Tyson Scholz after he failed to pay the regulator’s costs in proceedings that resulted in him being permanently barred from carrying on a unlicensed financial services business.

A ruling that finfluencer Canna Campbell infringed a rival’s ‘financial foreplay’ trade mark but owed zero damages was not a less favourable outcome for a fellow financial advisor than a $60,000 settlement offer, a court has found in rejecting a bid for indemnity costs.

The Supreme Court of Queensland has found that a 2021 direction for police officers to receive the COVID-19 vaccination was unlawful and a similar mandate for ambulance service workers had no effect.