As the head of Maurice Blackburn’s class actions group he helped win hundreds of millions of dollars for claimants and shaped the jurisprudence around the practice. As the Victorian Supreme Court’s newest judge, Andrew Watson has promised to keep up the fight for fair.
A class action against Transport for NSW over the alleged fraudulent acquisition of land to construct the $16 billion Westconnex tunnel in Sydney has been put on ice until the funder and the lead plaintiff can resolve a potential dispute.Â
A class action targeting Victoria Police over its use of capsicum spray against protesters has lost its bid to uncover confidential information about police crowd control tactics, after a judge found disclosure of the information could âendanger the publicâ.
A judge has shut down a case by Icon against Australia’s nuclear agency over the $27 million construction of a waste treatment plant at Lucas Heights, saying the dispute should be determined by an arbitrator despite the parties waiving pre-arbitration steps.
A prominent Perth lawyer acting for ex-defence minister Linda Reynolds in defamation cases against former staffer Brittany Higgins and her partner has been fined and reprimanded for two counts of professional misconduct in a separate matter.
The NSW Supreme Court has issued a practice note on forms of address that fails to invite parties to inform the court of their preferred pronouns, unlike two other state courts, one of which came under fire from ‘Harry Potter’ author JK Rowling last year.
The High Court is set to weigh in on a challenge to a precedent-setting decision that found breaches of statutory duty under a provision of the Design and Building Practitioners Act are not apportionable, in a case with significant ramifications for the NSW construction industry.
The entity in charge of a $511 million waste-to-energy plant south of Perth has filed a second lawsuit against Acciona, accusing the Spanish infrastructure giant of withholding $38.6 million in bank guarantees to use as leverage in unrelated disputes about the troubled project.
The NSW Court of Appeal has said it has no power to exclude group members who do not sign up to a class action from participating in a settlement, upholding a controversial decision that the Full Federal Court said was âplainly wrongâ.Â
Senior counsel for the banking royal commission Rowena Orr KC has been appointed as a judge on Victoria’s Court of Appeal, with class action silk Alistair Pound appointed to fill her shoes as the state’s solicitor-general.