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Employ­ee suc­ceeds in prov­ing Unfair Dis­missal but is left with­out a remedy

In Brief In an extra­or­di­nary deci­sion, Fair Work Aus­tralia (FWA) has found an unfair dis­missal despite the employ­er prov­ing a valid rea­son for dis­missal and com­pli­ance with the pro­ce­dur­al jus­tice require­ments. In a fur­ther twist, the employ­ee was left with­out a remedy. Mark Not­man v Neway Trans­port [2011] FWA 5162 Mark Not­man (Not­man) was employed by…

PPSA ter­mi­nol­o­gy

In Brief The Per­son­al Prop­er­ty Secu­ri­ties Act 2009 (PPSA) was due to come into force on 31 Octo­ber 2011, how­ev­er, the Com­mon­wealth Attor­ney Gen­er­al’s depart­ment has now con­firmed that this date is not achiev­able and it is now tar­get­ing a date before 1 Feb­ru­ary 2012. New terminology When it is imple­ment­ed, the PPSA will…

How do courts enforce restraint of trade clauses?

In Brief Fol­low­ing on from our ear­li­er arti­cle regard­ing Pre­serv­ing your busi­ness through restraint of trade claus­es, the New South Wales Supreme Court has recent­ly hand­ed down a deci­sion which pro­vides valu­able insight into the approach that the judi­cia­ry takes to enforc­ing restraint of trade clauses. Sev­en Net­work (Oper­a­tions) Ltd 7 ors v James War­bur­ton…

What’s the worst that could hap­pen if I don’t have a valid will?

In Brief Estate plan­ning is not some­thing we gen­er­al­ly think about as we go about lead­ing our busy lives. But what many of us fail to see is that neglect­ing to car­ry out this process could have seri­ous ram­i­fi­ca­tions for our fam­i­lies and their futures.  Hav­ing prop­er­ly con­sid­ered and draft­ed estate plan­ning…

6 tips for busi­ness owners

1. Eval­u­ate opportunities Before embark­ing on a new ven­ture, start­ing a new busi­ness or adding a new group to your exist­ing busi­ness you should test your new oppor­tu­ni­ty by using an eval­u­a­tion mod­el. We see too many peo­ple with a busi­ness idea, who neglect to under­take basic research and due dili­gence. Do not make…

“Best endeav­ours” and ​“rea­son­able endeav­ours” is there a difference?

In brief – Aus­tralian inter­pre­ta­tion dif­fer­ent to the UK In the UK, the term ​“best endeav­ours” implies a high­er stan­dard than the term ​“rea­son­able endeav­ours”. How­ev­er, in Aus­tralia the terms appear to have the same prac­ti­cal effect. Eng­lish posi­tion – ​“best endeav­ours” means a high­er thresh­old must be met In Eng­land, it seems that the…

Lucas­film — Repli­ca Star Wars impe­r­i­al stormtroop­er hel­mets not pro­tect­ed by copyright

In Brief The UK Supreme Court recent­ly hand­ed down its deci­sion in an appeal by Lucas­film con­cern­ing the intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty rights in var­i­ous arte­facts made for use in the first Star Wars film and repro­duced by Mr Ainsworth in 2004. This deci­sion is a vital les­son for any­one in Aus­tralia involved in…

Options avail­able for women seek­ing equal pay

“Over the course of her career, an Aus­tralian woman will earn $1 mil­lion less than a man, and will retire with less than half the sav­ings in her super­an­nu­a­tion account.” - Sha­ran Bur­row, ACTU pres­i­dent, Octo­ber 2009 Gen­der wage gap increas­ing for Aus­tralian women Despite the fact that women in Aus­tralia won the right…

Astro­turf­ing, social media and the law

In brief — If astro­turf­ing mis­leads con­sumers, it breach­es Aus­tralian Con­sumer Law “Astro­turf­ing” refers to an orches­trat­ed expres­sion of sup­port for a cause, whether a prod­uct, ser­vice or pol­i­cy, designed to give the impres­sion of a ​“grass­roots” move­ment. If this prac­tice mis­leads con­sumers, it breach­es both the Aus­tralian Con­sumer Law and the Code…

ASIC involve­ment marks new twist in Chameleon Min­ing case

In brief — Finan­cial ser­vices licence exemp­tions do not have ret­ro­spec­tive effect ASIC has become involved in the case of Inter­na­tion­al Lit­i­ga­tion Part­ners Pty Ltd v Chameleon Min­ing NL, sub­mit­ting to the court that exemp­tions from the need to hold a finan­cial ser­vices licence do not have ret­ro­spec­tive effect. Lit­i­ga­tion fund­ing agree­ment is a finan­cial product…

Grow­ing your busi­ness through acquisition

In brief – Acqui­si­tion can accel­er­ate the growth of your business One way to accel­er­ate the growth of your busi­ness dra­mat­i­cal­ly is to buy anoth­er busi­ness. This can help you gain a com­pet­i­tive advan­tage in your indus­try, expand the scale of your oper­a­tions and lead to a num­ber of poten­tial ben­e­fits. These include…

Fed­er­al Court sets seri­ous con­se­quences for mul­ti­ple breach­es of Do Not Call Register

In brief — Com­pa­nies need to be wary of breach­ing the Do Not Call Register Sub­stan­tial fines have been issued for breach­es of the Do Not Call Reg­is­ter since it was estab­lished in 2007. Estab­lish­ment of the Do Not Call Register The Do Not Call Reg­is­ter was set up by the Fed­er­al Gov­ern­ment…

Fed­er­al Court finds Cen­tro direc­tors guilty of breach­es of the Cor­po­ra­tions Act

In brief – Breach of finan­cial report­ing oblig­a­tions and duties of care and diligence The Fed­er­al Court has found that eight direc­tors of Cen­tro Prop­er­ties Group and Cen­tro Retail Group breached their finan­cial report­ing oblig­a­tions and their duties of care and dili­gence under the Cor­po­ra­tions Act 2001 in approv­ing incor­rect finan­cial…

Advan­tages in final­is­ing the mar­ket rent before a ten­ant exer­cis­es an option for a new lease term

In brief – Both land­lord and ten­ant ben­e­fit by agree­ing on the mar­ket rent Ten­ants who have an option for a fur­ther term con­tained in their lease can ben­e­fit from ask­ing the land­lord to con­firm the mar­ket rent payable for the first year of the option term before exer­cis­ing the option. This…

Swaab in BRW Magazine

In Brief In this Busi­ness Review Week­ly arti­cle Glob­al Net­works, Man­ag­ing Part­ner Fred Swaab dis­cuss­es Swaab’s inter­na­tion­al alliance with the Mer­i­tas Organisation. …