Allens

The Australian Conservation Foundation has reached an agreement with Woodside Energy to drop proceedings over the company’s Scarborough gas project in Western Australia, which alleged the $16.5 billion joint venture could not go ahead until its climate impacts were assessed. 

Trial in a five-year-old class action against Whitehaven Coal will proceed without further delay despite the plaintiff’s late bid to tender an expert report, with a judge finding no extraordinary reason to push off the hearing date any longer.

Super Retail Group has lost a bid to suppress parts of a case by former chief legal officer and company secretary Rebecca Farrell, who says she was sacked in May following complaints of corporate goverance issues, as a second senior employee steps up to back her former colleague’s claims.

Super Retail Group has made a bid to disqualify the solicitors of its former chief legal officer, who has sued the company to enforce an alleged settlement. But the Rebel Sport owner may have to defend a duelling application to disqualify its own solicitors, from Big Six firm Allens.

Super Retail Group’s former chief legal officer Rebecca Farrell says the company damaged her professional standing as a senior solicitor and exposed her to the risk of regulatory investigation and enforcement action.

A judge has temporarily suppressed details of a lawsuit by Super Retail Group’s former top lawyer, but he warned the retailer it would face a high bar if it sought to persuade him to keep the claims under wraps after a first case management hearing.

ANZ has confirmed that senior executives could face consequences in an investigation led by Herbert Smith Freehills and Allens regarding concerns that it manipulated government bond sales last year. 

The ex-chair of former ANZ unit OnePath “has not been cooperating” in a class action alleging it breached its duties as a trustee of superannuation funds by slugging members with excessive fees to pay commissions to financial advisers, a court has heard. 

The number of new class actions so far this year has fallen short of recent years, and not a single shareholder proceeding has been lodged in 2024 to date, according to a new report.

Four insurers have argued that class actions over alleged business interruption losses during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic should be de-classed, with one insurer saying group members cannot “go behind” a Full Court decision denying coverage for certain policyholders.