COVID-19

The judge overseeing ASIC’s first COVID-19-related case has criticised personal lender ClearLoans’ delay in responding to the case, saying a change in the company’s legal representation was not an excuse for defaulting on court orders.

With the Delta variant of the coronavirus thrusting Australia’s largest cities back into a protracted lockdown, lawyers forced to return to remote work for the forseeable future are lamenting the renewed loss of colleague and client connections.

Insurers Lloyds Australia and QBE want class actions by policyholders who were denied business interruption coverage for COVID-related shutdowns stayed until a related test case in the Federal Court is decided.

The heavy toll of COVID-related border closures on businesses in northern New South Wales could trigger a class action lawsuit, a lawyers has warned, as the political debate heats up over a proposal to move the border 7km south to the Tweed River.

A judge has thrown out a protester’s lawsuit challenging Victoria’s stay-at-home orders during the state’s extended lockdown last year, saying the relevant provisions in the government’s emergency legislation were valid “in all their potential operations”.

Sydney’s ongoing COVID-19 lockdown has created “logistical” difficulties delaying the release of a long awaited judgment in the ACCC’s consumer law case against collapsed private college Phoenix Institute, which was accused of misleading students through the marketing of its courses.

A controversial announcement by Victorian-based fruit and vegetable processor SPC that it will mandate COVID-19 vaccines for all of its 450 onsite workers could face legal challenges on several grounds.

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission has filed court action against a multi-million dollar Western Australian biotech company, alleging it made several misleading representations to the market during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

A class action over Melbourne’s public housing lockdown during its second COVID-19 wave in July last year will continue after the lawyer previously running the case was stripped of her practicing certificate.

Qantas has lost a case brought by the Transport Workers Union that challenged the airline’s decision to axe 2,000 staff and replace them with “insecure” labour hire workers, with a judge finding Qantas boss Andrew David outsourced ground operations partly to prevent employees engaging in industrial action.