A costs report in a settled class action against Woolworths that recommended almost $800,000 in legal fee deductions failed to wrestle with a key factor in weighing the proportionality of the costs, a judge has said.
The Western Australian government has won its bid to strike out a class action that seeks damages for alleged discrimination against First Nations Australians detained for unpaid fines.
Cruise operator Carnival PLC has been ordered to pay compensation to a passenger who suffered a miscarriage after evacuating from a cruise ship, with a judge finding the ship’s doctor gave her bad medical advice.
The man behind the Twitter handle Stock Swami has been ordered to pay $275,000 in damages to Tolga Kumova, after a judge found his tweets defamed the mining investor by accusing him of insider trading, misleading the market, and running a pump and dump scheme.
Lawyers for respondents in defamation litigation have been put on notice for their practice of tossing defences around like grenades in armed combat — it isn’t going to fly any more, warns a judge whose docket is stacked with high profile cases.
Intellectual property firm Spruson & Ferguson has launched court action to obtain documents showing alleged solicitation of clients by a handful of senior staff who jumped ship last year to form their own firm.
Retail giant Harvey Norman and consumer credit provider Latitude Finance have hit back at ASIC claims that they ran misleading ads for interest-free finance, saying reasonable consumers would have known additional conditions were laid out in the ads’ fine print.
A judge has approved a settlement in a class action against Queensland-based RMS Engineering and Construction alleging it refused to give staff meal breaks and threatened those who complained about excessive hours.
Class action settlement sums reached new highs last year, with the ten largest agreements totalling almost $1 billion, almost half of which was secured by one plaintiff law firm.
Car repair giant AMA Group has filed yet another lawsuit against ousted CEO Andrew Hopkins, this time seeking to block him and other senior executives from poaching staff and customers for a competing smash repair business.