January
- Exclusive
- Copper
Rio bosses asked staff to ‘limit’ emailing news of cost blowout
Internal documents provided to a New York court suggest the company pushed discussions about the troubled Oyu Tolgoi project onto encrypted messaging platforms.
- Peter Ker
December 2024
BHP’s Samarco class action shrinks as Brazilians quit
Four municipalities have exited a $36 billion compensation claim against the mining giant in the British courts in favour of alternative compensation.
- Peter Ker and Hans van Leeuwen
‘No taxi driver likes Uber much’: Uneasy truce in cabs trial
Uber users in Sydney and Melbourne can now get regular taxis on the app. Cabbies see the benefit, but it is an uneasy truce between the transport arch enemies.
- Tess Bennett
- Exclusive
- Michaelia Cash
Why top litigators are worried about a Dutton government
Litigation funders are worried about a crackdown on class action funding if the Coalition wins next year’s election.
- Updated
- Ronald Mizen
November 2024
WiseTech allegedly misled investors over ‘aggressive’ earnings targets
In a new class action, Phi Finney McDonald alleges that shareholders in the software company suffered after it missed earlier profit guidance in 2020.
- Max Mason
October 2024
Chickenpox and faded flowers: BHP challenges size of $70b lawsuit
BHP alleges some of the 620,000 bids for compensation rest on spurious claims, as part of a courtroom push to cut back the English class action’s colossal size.
- Hans van Leeuwen
‘Relentless pursuit of profits’: BHP lawsuit opens in London
The miner and class action lawyers Pogust Goodhead locked horns in court, but the protesters and TV crews gathered outside suggest a PR battle is also afoot.
- Updated
- Hans van Leeuwen
BHP faces down 620,000 Brazilians as Samarco class action kicks off
A British court will on Monday start a trial that was six years in the making. There’s $70 billion at stake, but some claimants say it’s not about money.
- Hans van Leeuwen
BHP tables $45bn plan to settle Brazilian quest for dam disaster cash
On the eve of a $70 billion class action in England, BHP has upped its parallel compensation offer to the Brazilian authorities over the 2015 Samarco disaster.
- Hans van Leeuwen
BHP gets fillip from Brazil as $70b UK class action looms
As the case against BHP over a 2015 mining disaster looms in London next Monday, a Brazilian court casts doubt on the law firm’s contracts with some clients.
- Hans van Leeuwen
- Exclusive
- Legal profession
Shareholder class actions plunge after prominent corporate victories
Only two new shareholder claims were filed in the first half of this year, as law firms await the outcome of a High Court special leave application on contingency fees.
- Maxim Shanahan
Business elite reaps the rewards of stolen wages cases
There’s a certain irony, and sadness, that it takes a rapacious firm looking to “maximise returns” for its wealthy backers to get governments to empty their pockets.
- Max Mason
September 2024
- Opinion
- Rio Tinto
Class action skewers Rio Tinto’s Bougainville redemption
A secretive company is disrupting efforts to finally make amends for the environmental devastation caused by its copper mine in Bougainville some 30 years ago.
- Tony Boyd
August 2024
- Exclusive
- Streaming
Fox Sports, AFL, NRL sued in US over alleged misuse of Meta tracking
The legal actions centre around the use of a monitoring tool on subscription services to watch the football codes outside Australia.
- Updated
- Max Mason
NSW’s top judge takes aim at Victoria on class actions
NSW Chief Justice Andrew Bell says the introduction of contingency fees in Victoria has “skewed” the market for class actions.
- Michael Pelly
- Exclusive
- Legal profession
Lawyer fees for class action against BHP top $680 million
BHP’s portion of the costs for the 22-week trial are forecast to be about £108 million, according to documents filed with Britain’s High Court.
- Ronald Mizen
July 2024
Rich Lister-owned home building empire faces $100m class action
West Australian construction company BGC Housing Group – founded by the late Len Buckeridge and still controlled by the family – is facing a class action from potentially thousands of aggrieved home owners.
- Tom Rabe
Court ruling rejecting weedkiller link to cancer welcomed by farmers
Federal Court rejects class action linking Australia’s most widely used farm chemical, glyphosate, to non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
- Brad Thompson
Workers’ rights law firm admits to underpaying staff $300,000
Prominent class action firm Slater & Gordon says there are “no excuses” for the underpayment which was due to a decade-long miscalculation of leave entitlements.
- Maxim Shanahan
Cattle farmers go to war with Labor over class action
Cattle farmers have accused Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus of launching an appalling, contemptuous and “outrageously misleading” attack on them.
- Ronald Mizen