Baker McKenzie

A judge has knocked back a class action’s bid to revise its claims against KPMG and former Arrium directors mid-trial, saying the amendments made for a "vastly different" case.

Arrium's former directors and auditor KPMG have lost a challenge to a key report relied on by shareholders in a class action over the collapsed steelmaker that says the company overstated the value of its assets.

Testing lab ALS has appealed a ruling ordering it to hand over most of a McGrathNicol report into allegedly exaggerated coal testing results, after a judge found last year that it had waived privileged over parts of the report by referring to its findings in an ASX statement.

A mid-trial amendment bid by shareholders in a class action over Arrium's collapse will delay cross-examination of the company's CEO and former directors, who told a judge Wednesday they should not be required to enter the witness box until the issue is resolved.

A class action over the collapse of Arrium is bound to its pleading that the asset value of all the steelmaker's business units was impaired by a total of $2.8 billion, a judge has ruled in the second week of trial.

Norton Rose Fulbright has hired the former co-head of Baker McKenzie's Australian healthcare and life sciences group to join its corporate practice group in Sydney.

A mid-trial fight has erupted in a class action over the collapse of steelmaker Arrium, with the company's auditor and directors saying the case had swerved, and the plaintiff accusing the respondents of "playing games".

Lawyers for LBJ Developments have told a judge that its joint venture partners on a development at the former Lilydale quarry breached their obligations by failing to honour a contractual right to tender for quarry filling works at the site.

KPMG has told a judge there is no evidence that Arrium's share price would have changed even if it had recorded a $2.8 billion impairment, urging the judge to reject the shareholder class action's "intuitive" case on loss. 

Former directors of steelmaker Arrium have rejected shareholder class action claims that the company's collapse was foreseeable, calling claims they had their heads in the sand “arrant nonsense”.