Mills Oakley

A judge has ordered a litigation funder that bankrolled a photographer’s unsuccessful copyright claim against CoreLogic to pay indemnity costs to the property data analytics company, saying the funder was not “motivated by any concerns for access to justice”.

Automotive electronics company Directed Electronics is set to claw back $3.27 million in commission payments made to a former manager through a secret side agreement with South Korean giant Hanhwa, with a ruling on damages still to come in the five-year case.

A court has appointed a referee to examine whether a law firm’s communications with Golden Financial furthered a plan by the financial advisory firm to divert assets to minimise a penalty sought by the corporate regulator in the first case alleging a breach of the so-called best interest duty.

Senior restructuring and insolvency lawyers have welcomed a novel ruling that found a liquidator was entitled to claim his costs ahead of the preferred claims of company employees, but questions remain about the “potentially difficult” interaction between two conflicting priority regimes.

In a novel decision, a judge has found that a liquidator is entitled to claim his “arguably disproportionate” costs ahead of the preferred claims of company employees.

The builder of an allegedly defective Haymarket apartment building has lost an appeal of a decision which found that separate breaches of statutory building warranties do not create individual causes of action.

A solicitor and a Sydney silk have been cleared of allegations they gave negligent advice in an action against a law firm, with a judge finding the barrister was “diligent, thorough, careful and ethical”.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission and Mazda have both lost their appeals in a case over the car manufacturer’s ‘appalling’ customer service, with three judges questioning the regulator’s decisions in how it ran the case.

The High Court will hear an appeal over whether real estate agent Biggin & Scott should be held liable for copyright infringement for its supposed “indifference” to the copying of real estate marketing platform Campaigntrack’s source code by a developer.

Sportsbet has won an injunction preventing the owner of the sportsbet.com domain from prosecuting an action in the US, which a judge said sought to interfere with an Australian domain name battle “in the most stark fashion.”