Contracts

The federal government has argued it should not have to pay the “very high figure” former Royal Australian Navy sailors are seeking in compensation for a breached training contract that allegedly saw them denied a higher rate of pay.

A Full Federal Court judge has questioned whether law firm Maurice Blackburn was “savvy” to the origins of New York’s famous Fearless Girl statue when it launched a copycat marketing campaign in Melbourne’s Federation Square.

Noumi, formerly known as Freedom Foods, has agreed to pay $860,000 in Blue Diamond Growers’ costs as part of a $48 million settlement of a legal spat over a licensing deal to sell Almond Breeze milk, which the food maker unsuccessfully argued should be heard in Australia.

Melbourne farmers-turned-developers the Bozzo family have sued a national law firm for allegedly giving bad tax advice on the $3 billion Wyndham Vale development in Melbourne’s west, situated on 482 hectares of land the family purchased in 1994.

Avant Insurance has challenged a Federal Court judge’s interpretation of the Insurance Contracts Act in its second attempt to avoid liability for the defence costs of a plastic surgeon named in a class action brought over botched breast augmentations.

Macpherson Kelley will head to an eleventh-hour mediation in a negligence case over the execution of a 10-year service station lease agreement with Shell, after the court heard settlement talks were well progressed.

Australian Mercedes-Benz dealers behind a $650 million lawsuit over the car maker’s decision to move to a fixed-price agency model allege the car maker engaged Deloitte as a consultant so it could “spin” its real reasons for making the change.

A subsidiary of AMP has settled a retired financial planner’s lawsuit accusing the company of using “unfair tactics” to avoid coughing up close to a million dollars owed under a buyout option exercised in November 2019.

Telstra is partially liable for a $2.6 million telecommunications bungle that “caused several catastrophic crashes” and slashed the calling capacity of a Melbourne-based telemarketing business by more than 60 per cent.

Insurers have triumphed in a lawsuit over coverage for the $3.2 million cancellation of the Big Red Bash outback music festival during the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic, with a judge finding a communicable disease exclusion in the organiser’s event cancellation policy was engaged.