A tribunal will recommend that a Perth solicitor be struck from the roll of practitioners after being found to have engaged in professional misconduct for failing to comply with requests for information by Western Australia’s legal complaints body.
Baker McKenzie has been dragged into a court case brought by a shareholder and creditor of failed energy company Armour Group, which alleges the law firm was knowingly involved in a plan by China-based Shunkang Group to take control of the company for cheap.
She earned the nickname ‘Shock and Orr’ as senior counsel assisting the banking royal commission, but the Victoria Court of Appeal’s newest judge told those gathered to welcome her to the bench on Tuesday that she thought twice before accepting the daunting assignment.
Supporting KPMG’s bid to move a class action over the collapse of Arrium from Melboure to Sydney, former directors of the failed steel company have told the High Court the Victoria Supreme Court was impermissibly preferring the policy of its state in finding a contingency fee order made in the case could be factored into a transfer application.
The Northern Territory public housing authority has moved to throw out a class action’s claims that it engaged in racial discrimination by failing to maintain public housing in remote Aboriginal communities.
The Chief Justice of the NSW Supreme Court has expressed concerns about a “slide in public respect” for institutions such as the court and the creeping phenomenon of “truth decay”.
Victoria Attorney-General Jaclyn Symes’ interference in a Fire Rescue Victoria union dispute was not “unlawful, unconscionable or illegitimate”, despite the AG overstepping her statutory authority, a judge has found.
A judge hearing a defamation case over a podcast by The Australian about the murder of Shandee Blackburn has granted a bid by a News Corp unit for a pre-trial hearing to determine whether acquitted suspect John Peros suffered serious harm from the podcast.
Victorian Liberal Party leader John Pesutto has settled two defamation lawsuits by organisers of the ‘Let Women Speak Rally’ and apologised for conflating them with neo-Nazis who crashed the event, saying his comments “could have more clearly differentiated between the groups”.
A judge has expressed concerns about the plaintiff’s proposed group costs order rate in a shareholder class action against fleet management company FleetPartners, saying the purpose of the GCO regime was to lower costs to group members.