Law Firms

The Virgin Australia administration continues to boost billables at the top end of town, with a short list of “well-funded” buyers revealed on Monday and an intense four weeks ahead as the bidders and their law firms scramble to make binding offers by the mid-June deadline.

Nine-owned Fairfax Media has been hit with a defamation lawsuit by Papua New Guinea’s Minister of Trade & Commerce, who claims the Australian Financial Review engaged in a “smear campaign” by publishing an article accusing him of corruption, bribery and money laundering.

Atanaskovic Hartnell has mostly come up short in a court battle for over $172,000 in legal fees, with a judge finding the law firm was in a “manifest position of conflict” in its dispute with two media companies defrauded by one of its former lawyers, Brody Clarke.

The ACCC has been given the green light to use witness statements prepared during its criminal cartel investigation of BlueScope Steel in the civil penalty proceedings launched by the regulator, but a fight with the steel giant over the admissibility of the evidence still looms.

Westpac has admitted to millions of breaches of anti-money laundering and counter terrorism financing laws, and has told a court it did not adequately monitor transactions of customers linked to child exploitation.

Supermarket giant Coles has been hit with a class action after revealing in February that it owes staff in its supermarket and liquor businesses at least $20 million in pay.

The Federal Court’s, albeit not total, approval of common fund orders, the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and the likely approval of contingency fees in Victoria mean that, more than ever, litigation funders and plaintiff law firms will be on the lookout for class actions, says Alex Haslam of Gilchrist Connell.

Medical device giant Johnson & Johnson has confirmed it will not seek the recusal of a Federal Court judge from a panel overseeing its pelvic mesh class action appeal, despite earlier raising concerns that he had seen privileged settlement communications.

The administrators of Virgin Australia have been absolved of personal liability for the ongoing operation of the embattled airline on an unprecedented scale, with Australia’s airline duopoly and the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic justifying the “extraordinarily wide” orders.

Power distributor Essential Energy has appealed a judgment granting preliminary discovery to landowners to pursue a potential class action over the 2018 Tathra bushfire.