Region

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 “plainly wrong”. 

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.

A court has given the green light to BHP’s bid to extend a Queensland coal mine over the objections of an environmental lobby group, saying the court’s acceptance of climate change did not mean it would reject all applications for fossil fuel projects.

A Sydney solicitor has lost his bid to summarily dismiss the legal watchdog’s case alleging he set up misleading crowdfunding pages seeking funding for class actions over government orders requiring mandatory COVID-19 vaccinations, as well as another class action that was never filed.

A tribunal has found prominent barrister Charles Waterstreet guilty of unsatisfactory professional conduct for sexually harassing three women, but declined to find he was unfit to practice after accepting expert evidence that undiagnosed mental illness “was the dominant causal factor” behind his actions.

A class action seeking to hold a regional NSW law firm liable for the actions of a former employee who was sentenced to a term of imprisonment for fraud offences in 2021 has reached a settlement. 

A class action against the New South Wales government alleging it discriminated against Indigenous communities on the south coast for engaging in cultural fishing practices will include up to 15,000 people, a court has heard.