A judge has refused to disqualify himself from a case by the Victorian legal watchdog against the former directors of two law firms, saying errors by him at directions hearings in the case did not equate to bias.
The firm behind a class action over Victoria’s COVID-19 hotel quarantine debacle has won a group costs order providing for a 30 per cent contingency fee, after promising it won’t ask for more down the road.
A law firm is investigating potential class action claims against New South Wales, South Australia, Victoria and Western Australia for allegedly discriminating against First Nations families by unnecessarily placing children in out-of-home care.
A new law firm has taken over from Quinn Emanuel in a class action against Transport for NSW over the alleged fraudulent acquisition of land to construct the $16 billion Westconnex tunnel in Sydney, after the mystery funder that’s backing the case lost its bid to avoid security.
A judge has ruled that a settlement offer made in a case can be adduced into evidence in a construction company’s suit against its former lawyers, finding that the offer was not covered by without penalty privilege.
Clive Palmer has lost his bid to overturn a council decision to reject his plan for a residential development at a Gold Coast flood plain, with a judge noting that would-be residents would be subject to the “adverse odours” of a nearby sewerage treatment plant.
A judge has reduced the jail sentence imposed on a Brisbane man who falsely represented he was a lawyer on the Airtasker app, but refused his bid to get away with a fine, saying a prison term “was the only appropriate sentencing option” in the case.
Accounting firm KPMG has asked the High Court for a second time to weigh in on the relevance of a contingency fee order made in a Victoria Supreme Court class action to its bid to transfer the case to NSW.
Personal injury law firm Gerard Malouf & Partners has hit back at Maurice Blackburn’s challenge to its class action experience in a fight for carriage of a class action against a Toyota unit, saying the top US firm it has partnered with to run the case trumped the major Australian plaintiff firm “on every conceivable dimension”.
The High Court will hear a $130 million case by two contractors on Chevron’s Gorgon gas field project, which argue the Western Australia Court of Appeal was outside power to uphold a ruling that set aside an arbitration win.