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Deeds of Release and their effec­tive­ness – update 2019

Intro­duc­tion Releas­es and in par­tic­u­lar, deeds of release, play a sig­nif­i­cant role in resolv­ing dis­putes across a wide range of issues and at dif­fer­ent stages in their evo­lu­tion. It is a rea­son­able expec­ta­tion to have, as the ben­e­fi­cia­ry of a release, that it will pro­vide cer­tain­ty going for­ward and that the per­son pro­vid­ing the…

Secu­ri­ty for costs and non-res­i­dent plaintiffs

What is secu­ri­ty for costs? It is a fact of life that plain­tiffs and defen­dants in legal pro­ceed­ings rep­re­sent­ed by lawyers will incur costs, which in some cas­es can be substantial. Gen­er­al­ly, the unsuc­cess­ful par­ty in those pro­ceed­ings is ordered to pay the costs of the suc­cess­ful par­ty. Those costs are usu­al­ly…

Mary Digiglio fea­tured in Law Soci­ety Journal

Chair of Mer­i­tas Aus­tralia and New Zealand Region­al Com­mit­tee Mary Digiglio fea­tured in the Law Soci­ety Jour­nal to dis­cuss the recent Well­ness sur­vey which was con­duct­ed by Mer­i­tas Aus­tralia and New Zealand and revealed most employ­ees at small- and medi­um-sized law firms feel their men­tal health and well­be­ing is impor­tant…

Advance­ment of Women Charter

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We wel­come two new lawyers to the team

We are thrilled to wel­come two new lawyers to our lit­i­ga­tion and fam­i­ly law teams, Alexan­dra Streltso­va and Monique Love­day.Alexan­dra will be work­ing along­side Part­ner Marc Bad­dams and the lit­i­ga­tion team bring­ing over 10 years of expe­ri­ence in com­mer­cial dis­pute res­o­lu­tion and lit­i­ga­tion and prac­tices pre­dom­i­nant­ly in the areas of com­mer­cial…

The Reli­gious Dis­crim­i­na­tion Bill: Ini­tial Observations

Fol­low­ing the Mar­riage Equal­i­ty debate and the ongo­ing Israel Folau saga, the issue of reli­gious free­dom has been giv­en some promi­nence. The Aus­tralian Gov­ern­ment has released what it describes as ​‘reli­gious free­dom reforms’ on which it is active­ly seek­ing sub­mis­sions. The pro­posed reforms will undoubt­ed­ly be the sub­ject of much…

Personal/​carers leave — how it should be cal­cu­lat­ed- lat­est devel­op­ments- August 2019

Cal­cu­lat­ing employ­ee enti­tle­ments can be com­plex and demand­ing at the best of times, how­ev­er the deci­sion of the Full Court of the Fed­er­al Court in Mon­delez v Auto­mo­tive, Food, Met­als, Engi­neer­ing, Print­ing and Kin­dred Indus­tries Union known as the Aus­tralian Man­u­fac­tur­ers Work­ers Union (AMWU) [2019] FCAFC 138 will, unless dis­turbed, add…

Swaab Con­nect | Sep­tem­ber 2019

A per­son who is the sub­ject of a defam­a­to­ry pub­li­ca­tion can sue for defama­tion, but what about com­pa­nies? Marc Bad­dams and Sean Green­wood advise if a com­pa­ny can sue for defama­tion. Michael Byrnes out­lines some ini­tial obser­va­tions fol­low­ing The Aus­tralian Gov­ern­ment’s deci­sion to release​‘reli­gious free­dom reforms’, Richard Ott­ley looks at fac­tors which…

Michael Byrnes quot­ed in the Aus­tralian Finan­cial Review — 5 Sep­tem­ber 2019

Michael Byrnes quot­ed as say­ing ​“I don’t want in any way to down­play or triv­i­alise how offen­sive it is to com­pare some­one to Hitler or oth­ers involved to Nazi Ger­many,” Mr Byrnes said. “But [the Down­fall meme] is often not nec­es­sar­i­ly equat­ing the par­tic­u­lar peo­ple [it satiris­es] with Hitler or Nazi…

Michael Byrnes appears on ​‘Mon­ey News’ host­ed by John Stan­ley on 2GB

Michael Byrnes speaks with John Stan­ley on radio 2GB and 4BC (at 48.20) about the​“Hitler par­o­dy sack­ing’ which sparks new free speech debate.Lis­ten to the record­ing here…

Beyond a break-up — Aus­trali­a’s first divorce centre

The Divorce Cen­tre is a one stop shop help­ing clients nav­i­gate one of life’s most stress­ful expe­ri­ences and pro­vides legal, emo­tion­al and finan­cial advice through an expe­ri­enced nation­al and local team of divorce coach­es, lawyers, medi­a­tors, finan­cial plan­ners, and psy­chol­o­gists.We have a wealth of expe­ri­ence through­out our fam­i­ly law team, with both…

Proud sup­port­ers of Spark Fes­ti­val 2019

Fol­low­ing on from last years’ enor­mous suc­cess which saw over 13,000 atten­dees, the annu­al Spark Fes­ti­val is Australia’s largest event for start-ups, investors, entre­pre­neurs and inno­va­tors is set to be a mas­sive suc­cess! This year Spark Fes­ti­val will run a 17-day pro­gram from Octo­ber 10 – 27 and will include over 10…

It’s almost time: Amend­ments to the Build­ing and Con­struc­tion Indus­try Secu­ri­ty of Pay­ment Act 1999 (NSW) to com­mence on 21 Octo­ber 2019

The Build­ing and Con­struc­tion Indus­try Secu­ri­ty of Pay­ment Act 1999 (NSW) (the Act) is about to under­go some changes. Those changes will apply to con­struc­tion con­tracts in New South Wales entered from 21 Octo­ber 2019. What are the changes?Ref­er­ence dates are goneThere are no more ref­er­ence dates. The con­cept of a ​‘ref­er­ence date’ will…

Gen­uine redun­dan­cy or unfair dis­missal? The dif­fer­ence could be in the consultation

When it comes to ter­mi­nat­ing employ­ees due to changes in oper­a­tional require­ments, com­pli­ance is key, includ­ing com­pli­ance with rel­e­vant pro­vi­sions in the Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth) (FW Act) and any applic­a­ble mod­ern award or enter­prise agreement.  As a grow­ing body of case law demon­strates, fail­ure to gen­uine­ly engage with the pro­ce­dures…

Fair Work Com­mis­sion crit­i­cis­es time-wast­ing unfair dis­missal applications

In a recent deci­sion, Diane Por­te­ous v G. Kakafikas and A.G. Bek part­ner­ship t/​a Yarra Glen Phar­ma­cy [2019] FWC 6264, Deputy Pres­i­dent Col­man of the Fair Work Com­mis­sion (Com­mis­sion) has crit­i­cised appli­cants who com­mence unfair dis­missal pro­ceed­ings and then don’t take the nec­es­sary steps to pros­e­cute their claim. The Case The Appli­cant worked…