Leading senior barristers and former judges are urging Victoria’s upper house to oppose the Andrews government’s COVID-19 Omnibus bill, saying legislation allowing citizens to make arrests was an overreach.
A decision earlier this month to extend Victoria’s controversial COVID-19 curfew was “bizarre, capricious, arbitrary” and was made under pressure from the state’s Premier, a Victoria Supreme Court judge has heard.
Western Australian Premier Mark McGowan has struck back at a defamation lawsuit by Clive Palmer, filing a counterclaim accusing the mining magnate of making a number of defamatory statements, including that he was a “liar” involved in “covering up” illegal activity.
The Andrews government is facing another COVID-19 related class action, this one on behalf of farm operators financially stung by Victorian and South Australian border closures.
A second class action has been launched against the Andrews Government over stage four restrictions imposed on Victorians, alleging failures to manage the state’s hotel quarantine program were directly to blame for the second wave of COVID-19 cases.
Herbert Smith Freehills will ask lawyers to spend just 60 per cent of their time in the office once they are free to return, a change to the firm’s agile working policy that acknowledges the upside of remote working in the COVID-19 era, co-head of global disputes Anna Sutherland told Lawyerly.
Media outlets facing liability for allegedly defamatory remarks left under news articles they posted on Facebook are taking their case to the High Court, after a court of appeal found the companies were publishers of the third-party comments.
The High Court has rejected an appeal challenging a ruling that found a failed political candidate liable for defamatory responses made by readers of two Facebook posts he published that labelled a South Australian businessman greedy and selfish, but the court has left the door open to weigh in on the issue of secondary publication of social media comments.
A judge overseeing the Ruby Princess class action has cautioned funders against “double dipping” when seeking payouts from group members, while cruise line Carnival has attempted to shift part of the blame for the COVID-19 debacle onto the Prime Minister.
Insurers for The Star have told a court that the casino’s lawsuit, which seeks to resolve threshold policy coverage issues in a bid to claim the losses it has suffered as a result of government restrictions enacted to stop the spread of COVID-19, is incomplete.