Essential Energy has lost its appeal of a ruling granting preliminary discovery for a potential class action over the 2018 Tathra bushfire in New South Wales.
A five-month litigation drought due to the difficulties of remote investigations and staff diversions during the coronavirus pandemic will end soon, ACCC chairman Rod Sims told Lawyerly, with enforcement action set to ramp back up in the second half of the year.
The ACCC has lost its bid to stay a cartel appeal by Indonesian airline PT Garuda, with a judge finding the competition watchdog had not shown the airline acted in contempt of court by failing to pay a $19 million fine.
Australia’s competition regulator has asked technology companies, news outlets and other stakeholders to grapple with some of the complex issues required to develop the Government’s new mandatory code, which will see digital giants such as Google and Facebook forced to bargain with publishers and pay for news content.
A court has granted a request from Grosvenor Litigation Services, the funder that backed two class actions against Volkswagen over its emissions cheating scandal, to suppress the details of a co-funding agreement with Vannin Capital.
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.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has won court approval to bring new claims against BlueScope Steel for allegedly seeking to induce competitor OneSteel to engage in cartel conduct.
Bupa Aged Care has been ordered to pay a $6 million penalty for charging customers of its aged care facilities for services it never provided, including enhancements intended to improve the quality of life for its most vulnerable residents, such as those suffering from dementia and blindness.
A common fund order made at the outset of a class action against the state of Queensland over stolen wages opened the historic $190 million settlement up to “thousands more” disadvantaged people who were affected by the state government’s “discriminatory, unjust…and disgraceful” policies, a judge has said.
Personal healthcare giant PZ Cussons has lost its bid for indemnity costs against the ACCC, after claiming that the regulator was “doomed to fail” when it appealed a judgment dismissing its case over an alleged laundry detergent cartel.