Norton Rose Fulbright

Consulting giant Accenture has failed to keep a human resources executive’s claims of Fair Work breaches out of the public eye, with a court finding prior publication of the allegations would render a suppression order pointless.

The Kingdom of Spain must pay $56,000 in security to bring its challenge in a long-running dispute over whether it must pay a $200 million arbitral award to two renewable energy investors. 

A former human resources executive at Accenture is pushing back against an application by the consulting giant to suppress her employment case pending mediation, saying the cat is already out of the bag.

BlueScope Steel is seeking to overturn a record $57.5 million penalty for engaging in attempted price-fixing with flat steel distributors, telling an appeals court that it was simply trying to make its competitors understand “it was in their interests to price differently”. 

HWL Ebsworth has won indemnity costs against a former client who alleged the firm gave negligent advice over property in Parramatta’s ‘Auto Alley’, with a court saying the client was the “author of the outcome about which it complains” by rejecting a $1.35 million settlement offer.

The former general manager of iProsperity has lost his challenge to the collapsed fund manager’s liquidators getting more time to investigate $18 million in payments he received, with the Full Court finding they were not wrong to prioritise investigations into $62.5 million in payments to Crown and The Star.

General Motors has failed to overturn a decision that put it on the hook for the applicant’s full costs in a partial settlement in a class action on behalf of Holden dealers, with an appeals court finding GM could not “walk away” from the ordinary meaning of the phrase ‘the plaintiff’s costs of the proceedings’.

The corporate regulator has taken market operator ASX to court for allegedly making misleading statements about the replacement project for its CHESS share register, including that the project was on track to go live in April 2023. 

The High Court has rejected an appeal from a joint venture that provided work on Chevron’s Gorgon liquified natural gas project that argued the Western Australia appeals court lacked power to uphold a ruling that set aside an arbitration ruling in a $130 million dispute over the project.

Accenture has succeeded in a bid to keep a lid on court documents in a Fair Work claim by a former human resources executive ahead of mediation — the second recent suppression order of its kind made by the Federal Court.