The ATO has refused to sign an undertaking that it won’t prosecute PricewaterhouseCoopers for tax crimes if it hands over thousands of documents at the centre of a legal professional privilege fight.
The High Court has dismissed an appeal by Westpac challenging a ruling that found the bank breached its duties to customers by providing personal financial advice as part of a telephone campaign encouraging customers to roll over external superannuation accounts.
The Morrison government faces a fifth class action alleging the use of toxic firefighting foam at a Defence Force base on the South Coast of New South Wales contaminated Indigenous land.
A judge has ordered Carlton United Breweries, maker of iconic Australian beers Victoria Bitter and Carlton Draught, to hand over information to the Commissioner of Taxation relating to an audit of the beer giant.
The Full Federal Court has granted a limited appeal in the Kingdom of Spain’s challenge to a judgment enforcing a $375 million arbitration award over two renewable energy investments, ordering a redrafting of the primary judge’s orders but rejecting claims that Spain was immune as a foreign state from enforcement of the award.
Chinese businessman Dr Chau Chak Wing has been awarded $590,000 in a Federal Court judgment that found an ABC Four Corner’s report contained “untrue and seriously defamatory imputations” about alleged espionage, bribery of UN leaders, and links to the Chinese Communist Party.
A former HWL Ebsworth partner claims the firm and managing partner Juan Martinez have failed to pay her money she is owed because she did not support the law firm’s aborted plan to go public.
The funder behind a class action against McMillan Shakespeare has warned against the court beating it up like a ‘pinata’ in a settlement approval hearing in which the judge expressed “real concerns” about the portion of a $9.5 million settlement earmarked for group members.
The judge who found J&J’s pelvic mesh implants defective in a high stakes class action ruling mde a “pervasive error” in disregarding the knowledge and views of the applicants’ doctors, an appeals court has heard.
Concerns behind criticism that courts aren’t equipped to assess a class action funder’s commission are exaggerated, and the fixing by judges of reasonable remuneration, at least in other cases, is nothing new, a Federal Court judge has said.