Our class actions team recently published our Class Action Risk 2016 report The objective of the report is to look behind the headlines and hype that often surrounds class actions to provide a more holistic and objective assessment of class action risk for our clients This is particularly important ...

With the release of an ASFA Best Practice Paper on insourcing investment management we look at some of the challenges and opportunities for in-house legal teams that come with the seemingly inexorable move in the superannuation industry towards insourcing investment management functions ...

The Queensland Government is proposing legislation that will restore a prohibition on landlords requiring tenants to pay land tax under commercial leases entered into after 1 January 1992 and before 30 June 2009 This essentially negates the effect of a Supreme Court decision that land tax from 30 ...

There has been a great deal of attention given to the meanings of financial product advice and personal advice in the Corporations Act and many of us are eagerly waiting to see what Justice Gleeson will say about the topic in the case ASIC has brought against the BT trustees. ...

The release of the text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement has renewed the debate about the ability of foreign investors to sue governments under investor-State dispute settlement mechanisms which are commonly part of international trade agreements or investment treaties between States ...

In a recent decision of the Victorian Supreme Court a Melbourne municipal council was held liable to compensate a landowner for the costs that were incurred by the landowner in the course of complying with a clean-up notice issued under the Environment Protection Act 1970 Vic despite the pollution ...

The Government has finally begun the process of implementing its policy on crowd-sourced equity funding CSEF by introducing a Bill and releasing draft exposure regulations late last year which envisage the establishment of a CSEF regime in Australia The Bill has been referred to the Senate Economics ...

The Supreme Court of Queensland recently considered whether liquidated damages in a standard form construction contract were a penalty In a decision that traversed long-held doctrines on penalties and recent developments in emAndrewsem and Paciocco the court ruled that the obligation to pay ...

The WASC has provided additional guidance on the types of errors that can lead to an adjudicators determination being quashed by the court ...

CAMAC and the FSI have acknowledged that the current Australian regulatory settings are hostile to crowd sourced equity funding A recently released Treasury Discussion Paper has considered three options for law reform and what each might mean for the development of this innovative form of capital ...