Colin Biggers & Paisley

The construction industry is bracing for new risks brought about by the use of artificial intelligence in design and planning of large projects, says a new partner at Colin Biggers & Paisley. 

Insurers have won a challenge to a declaration that engineering firm CIMIC could make claims under policies for costs arising from corruption cases, including a $32 million class action settlement.

The Australian Pacific Investment Corporation has scored a win a dispute with Vasco Trustees over a managed investment scheme at the Yarra Valley Lodge hotel, with a judge finding that ‘evergreen’ licensing agreements are invalid. 

A contradictor has argued against Monash IVF’s bid for orders allowing it to retain embryos as evidence in a class action, saying the Victorian Supreme Court has no power to make orders inconsistent with the company’s statutory obligation to store embryos for a maximum of five years. 

Experts say the chaos of last month’s CrowdStrike outage is likely to spark a flurry of litigation both overseas and at home, including class actions, but lawyers bringing the claims will face significant hurdles.

Monash IVF is fighting a class action’s bid to file a fourth statement of claim in the three year-old case over the alleged destruction of potentially viable embryos, saying the proposed pleadings sparked by an expert report constituted a new case. 

Sydney-based plastic surgeon Daniel Lanzer and several of his associates have objected to a class action’s eighth attempt at getting its claims over allegedly negligent cosmetic procedures right, saying the plaintiffs were engaged in a “continuing cycle of propagating versions” of their case.

Gilchrist Connell is growing its national insurance practice, nabbing three litigation experts from rival firm Colin Biggers and Paisley for its Sydney office. 

A judge has approved a $40 million settlement in a shareholder class action against collapsed engineering firm RCR Tomlinson, with almost half of the settlement to go towards a funder’s commission and legal fees. 

The auditors of self-managed superannuation funds that clients of Melissa Caddick invested with the Sydney fraudster and her company Maliver have hit back at class action claims, saying the clients have themselves to blame for handing over “direct control” of their funds.