Building products supplier Wagners has successfully challenged a Queensland Supreme Court judgment ruling in favour of Boral in a high-stakes cement supply dispute between the construction giants.
While there was no shortage of pain and challenges for law firms as the coronavirus raged across the globe last year, a number of big firms also felt the sting of litigation from disgruntled clients, partners and employees.
Payouts in class actions in 2020 largely kept pace with the previous year despite the financial strain of the COVID-19 pandemic, with companies and other defendants paying more than $696 million to settle class actions last year.
The ACCC has taken legal action against women’s activewear company Lorna Jane for allegedly representing to consumers during the height of the coronavirus pandemic in Australia that its anti-virus activewear would protect them from viruses, including COVID-19.
Former BlueScope general manager of sales and marketing Jason Ellis has been sentenced to a wholly suspended prison term of eight months after pleading guilty to obstructing a price fixing investigation.
Norton Rose Fulbright has been hit with indemnity costs in a long-running case brought by a former partner, with a judge finding the law firm persisted with its “continued maintenance of groundless denials” in the lead-up to a $160,000 judgment against it.
Arnold Bloch Leibler has hit back at a class action by Slater & Gordon shareholders accusing it of misleading and deceptive conduct and breaching its duty of care by greenlighting the law firm’s $1.2 billion acquisition of Quindell, filing cross-claims against Slater & Gordon and two of its former directors.
ASIC will not appeal a Federal Court decision tossing the majority of its case against former Tennis Australia director Harold Mitchell and accusing the regulator of “confirmatory bias” in bringing the case, but has foreshadowed fresh claims related to allegedly inconsistent statements given during its investigation.
Crown prosecutors are arguing a former BlueScope executive who has pleaded guilty to obstructing an ACCC price fixing investigation should face jail time for the “objectively serious” conduct.
A judge has ruled that disaster payments cannot be taken into consideration in assessing damages in a long-running class action over the 2011 Queensland floods that destroyed 2,000 homes and claimed 12 lives.