Western Australia

As another trial traversing the rape allegations of former political staffer Brittany Higgins gets underway, a lawyer for Senator Linda Reynolds has told a court Higgins’ claim she was pressured not to pursue a complaint against Bruce Lehrmann was the stuff of fairytales.

The Legal Practice Board’s decision to audit lawyers at a compensation firm following a complaint about paralegals allegedly engaging in unqualified legal practice has been quashed, with a court finding the law didn’t permit investigation of individual solicitors.

Dutch paint company AkzoNobel has lost a mid-trial bid to inspect instructions given by Allen & Overy to experts who tested its allegedly unsuitable protective coating used on pipework on the $45 billion Ichthys natural gas project. 

An appeals court has knocked back builder Hanssen’s attempt to dodge a decade-old dispute over repairs to one of its residential buildings on constitutional grounds, saying the Perth company’s argument would precipitate an “extraordinary” result if accepted.

A judge has rejected an application by a director of mining tech company Globaltech to replace administrators from McGrathNicol after arguing there was an appearance of bias since their fellow partners used to be on the board of its biggest unsecured creditor, Boart Longyear.

The director of a Perth law firm fired a legal assistant by a text message that was generated with ChatGPT, the Fair Work Commission has found.

A judge has set aside a costs agreement between a Perth-based law firm and its client in a family law matter that culminated in a $87,000 bill, saying the agreement was “positively misleading” with respect to the applicable hourly rates.

A judge has ordered Seven West-owned publication The West Australian to pay a former public servant $180,000 in damages over an article about an allegation of fraud that had “a sensationalist overtone”.

K&L Gates has lured three partners from rival firms to bolster its corporate, IP and real estate offerings across the country, including a former principal of Davies Collison Cave. 

The owner of a major coal power station in Western Australia has lost its bid for an inquiry into alleged misconduct by the receivers of collapsed Griffin Coal after they tried to avoid obligations under coal supply agreements, with a judge saying the allegations were “relatively trivial”.