ASIC has lost a bid to dismiss former G8 Education chair Jennifer Hutson’s application seeking declarations that she was unlawfully examined by the regulator over the company’s $162 million hostile takeover bid for Affinity Education Group.
Telecommunications giant SingTel is challenging a ruling in favour of the Australian Taxation Office’s decision to reject over $894,000 in tax deductions related to its $14.2 billion acquisition of Optus.
The Full Court has overturned a landmark judgment which found artificial intelligence can be named as an inventor on patent applications, in a decision which brings Australia in line with findings from courts in the UK, US and EU.
Rail freight operator Aurizon has triumphed in a tax dispute with the ATO, with a court finding that credit for a $4.4 billion loan by the Queensland government made during an initial public offering in 2010 was share capital despite no shares being issued to the state government.
An appeals court’s finding that the federal government does not owe a duty of care to Australian kids to protect them from the effects of climate change will stand after the lead applicants declined to take the matter to the High Court.
Advice from non-lawyers and “routed” through a legal practitioner at multidisciplinary partnership PricewaterhouseCoopers cannot be shielded under legal professional privilege, the Federal Court has found.
The ATO has won a legal challenge over when it can claim tax from trust income, with the High Court finding beneficiaries cannot “retrospectively expunge” their entitlements to the proceeds of a trust despite the potential “unfairness” this creates.
Mercedes-Benz will defend ACCC proceedings alleging it exposed consumers to serious injury or death by failing to comply with obligations under a compulsory recall of potentially deadly Takata airbags by arguing the recall was invalid.
A judge has rejected the Australian Taxation Office’s claim that legal professional privilege does not apply to any communications between PricewaterhouseCoopers and its client, meat processor JBS, but has found that many of the reviewed documents do not satisfy the test of privilege.
A judge has ordered that $1.27 million be set aside to cover the costs of the law firm administering the settlement in the class action over the federal government’s Robodebt scheme, cutting about $1 million from the figure sought.