Law Firms

A judge has allowed Slater & Gordon to adjourn a fight about security for costs in a shareholder class action against Beach Energy until it has more favourable evidence of its debt financing position, over the energy company’s objection to the “doctrinally unprecedented” application.

The ACT government has argued the Federal Court cannot hear a class action brought on behalf of public housing tenants who were allegedly forced to relocate.

The law firm behind a class action against Insurance Australia Group has secured a group costs order that will give it 30 per cent of any proceeds — a contingency fee rate six percentage points higher than the median rate for shareholder cases.

Builder J Hutchinson and the union for construction workers have successfully appealed a finding that they unlawfully agreed to boycott an independent subcontractor at a Brisbane building site.

Mehreen Faruqi is fighting to include evidence of senator Pauline Hanson’s alleged history of ‘dehumanising’ comments on race and ethnicity in a trial over the One Nation leader’s tweet saying the deputy Greens leader should “piss off back to Pakistan”.

The former head of brand marketing at Mecca Brand has dropped her lawsuit alleging the cosmetics retailer violated the Fair Work Act by making her position redundant after a period of maternity leave.

More companies may find themselves in the position of Medibank — which recently failed to stay representative proceedings before the privacy regulator while a related class action is on foot — so long as the laws remain unchanged, and law firms are willing to gamble on privacy class actions.

The Supreme Court of Queensland has found that a 2021 direction for police officers to receive the COVID-19 vaccination was unlawful and a similar mandate for ambulance service workers had no effect.

Victoria’s Peninsula Health has abandoned an appeal of a ruling in a class action that found it breached workplace laws by failing to pay overtime to a junior doctor, a capitulation that could be a game changer for a series of class actions against health care providers.

A judge has ordered soft class closure in a class action against Suncorp unit AAI over allegedly worthless insurance, saying that knowing how many of the 200,000 group members are likely to participate would assist in resolving the case.