An appeals court has refused a bid by Bianca Rinehart and John Hancock to block an arbitrator from deciding a long-running dispute over valuable mining assets, despite his wife having acted for Gina Rinehart in related proceedings.
A Federal Court judge has recused himself from hearing a fraud trial against Forum Finance, after expressing that he had an “unfavourable” impression of director Vince Tesoriero’s reliability as a witness.
A judge who has granted a lawyer leave to appear in proceedings via audio visual link has warned the legal profession that courts are expecting to “return to normal” and that tolerance for remote hearings has “come to an end”.
A judge has denied a bid by accounting firm Pitcher Partners to transfer a $127 million lawsuit brought by the Twigg family, saying he was best placed to hear “serious allegations” the firm helped race car driver Max Twigg give a false understanding of his company’s assets.
The Australian Law Reform Commission has recommended the establishment of a federal judicial commission as a “transparent and independent” way of addressing concerns about the conduct of judges.
A Melbourne lawyer “driven by his own greed and ego” should be struck from the roll for at least nine years for grossly overcharged his clients and being “professionally dishonourable, blatantly dishonest and deceitful”, VCAT has found.
A client of Corrs Chambers Westgarth has filed an appeal after a judge found the firm went “far beyond the permissible scope” of involvement in an expert report prepared for a trade secrets case.
Former Attorney-General Christian Porter has lost his challenge to a ruling that barred silk Sue Chrysanthou from representing him in his now-settled defamation lawsuit against the ABC over its coverage of historical rape allegations.
A court has rejected an appeal by a lawyer who acted for both sides in an employment dispute between a company and its former managing director and advised the director to “take and park” over $370,000 from the company account as leverage.
A judge’s recent ruling throwing out an expert report in a trade secrets case because the law firm briefing the expert had failed to disclose its involvement in preparing the evidence is a stark reminder to solicitors their paramount duty is to the court, not to their client.