Victoria

A judge overseeing a shareholder class action against Insurance Australia Group says more evidence is needed to back the applicant’s bid for an order giving lawyers 30 per cent of any recoveries.

Executives of collapsed Bruck Textile Technologies have been committed to stand trial on charges alleging they schemed their way out of making more than $3 million in redundancy payments to their 58 employees. 

A judge has rejected TPG-owned Anew Climate’s bid for default judgment against an Australian company that allegedly impersonated a US carbon offset developer in order to unlawfully receive payments under a $1 billion deal, saying “it’s not hard” to make the application under the correct rule.

A judge has criticised HWL Ebsworth’s discovery efforts and ordered the law firm to try again in the firm’s dispute with a former partner claiming the company cut him out of a proposed ASX float in 2020. 

As the knives come out in a contest between four law firms battling to run an $80 million class action against Star Entertainment, a court-appointed barrister has named his favourites – one of which has proposed a contingency fee of just 14 per cent.

Three firms fighting for carriage of a $80 million class action against Star Entertainment say a group costs order would guard against ‘costs blowouts’ in the case and have urged a judge to ditch a no win, no fee proposal brought by fourth-to-file firm Shine Lawyers.

In a decade-old dispute, Viterra has lost an appeal of a judgment holding it liable to pay Cargill Australia $293 million for misrepresentations about the performance of its malt producer Joe White, which it sold to Cargill for $420 million in 2013.

Casino operator Crown Resorts has agreed to backpay employees more than $1.2 million, after the company notified the Fair Work Ombudsman that it had underpaid workers at its Melbourne and Perth locations for almost six years. 

Ashurst has poached two Gilbert + Tobin partners for its corporate team, as the firm expands its offering in the public and private M&A markets in Australia and abroad.

The Victorian government has elevated an Associate Justice who has overseen class actions and a senior counsel who assisted the Victorian royal commission into Crown Resorts to serve as judges on the Supreme Court of Victoria.