The High Court has granted special leave to sacked climate skeptic professor Peter Ridd to challenge James Cook University’s successful appeal of a $1.2 million judgment in his favour over his termination, wading into a debate over the power of universities to constrain professors’ rights to free speech.
Australasian food company Goodman Fielder has successfully challenged a bid by Conga Foods and an Italian pasta producer to register the ‘La Famiglia’ trade mark for pasta products.
Norwegian shipping company Wallenius Wilhlmsen Ocean has been fined $24 million for conspiring to fix the rates charged for shipping vehicles to Australia, bringing the total fines won by the ACCC over the shipping cartel to $83.5 million.
A Queensland activist group has come up trumps in a drawn-out legal battle against New Acland Coal’s proposed expansion of a coal mine, with the High Court striking down previous lower court rulings giving it the green light.
A group of women harmed by pelvic mesh devices produced by Johnson & Johnson have accused it of persisting with a “wreckage” of a case in which one of its own doctors admitted the pharmaceutical company knew of the risks posed by the implants at they time they were sold worldwide.
The judge who found J&J’s pelvic mesh implants defective in a high stakes class action ruling mde a “pervasive error” in disregarding the knowledge and views of the applicants’ doctors, an appeals court has heard.
Herbert Smith Freehills has snagged one of the country’s leading competition lawyers who advised on two of the biggest and most contentious mergers in recent years from rival Clayton Utz to join its market-leading competition and trade practices group.
A judge has sided with five investments banks and rejected a bid to amend a class action alleging a series of cartel agreements to rig foreign exchange rates, saying there were “substantial problems” with the proposed pleadings.
Lawyerly’s Litigation Firms of 2020 delivered significant victories for clients last year in bet-the-company matters, thriving in a tumultuous year that saw courts and litigants adapt to virtual trials and other new norms that are sure to outlast the COVID-19 pandemic.
A $25 million settlement has been reached in three long-running shareholder class actions over the collapse of electronics retailer Dick Smith, under which the funders that backed the litigation will not recover their costs and shareholders recoveries will be small.