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Worth Knowing

The Flight of the Oligarchs (or, “Life on the High Seize”)

In recent days there has been a flurry of activity in European ports seeking to impound super yachts owned by Russian oligarchs pursuant to sanctions for the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Questions arise as to the legality of seizing these ships while in port or in the territorial sea of a coastal State or on

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March 4
2022
Maritime Law

Good faith in commercial contracts (or, “The scrap about scraps”)

Most people know that FOMO is the Fear Of Missing Out, but what about the fear of being locked in (for example, to an unprofitable commercial contract?) We might have to start calling that “foam-o”, as a result of a recent case on the subject, which involved a dispute about a contract for the sale of scrap

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March 9
2019
Commercial Law Litigation and dispute resolution

Parental advisory – when are parent companies (and their directors) liable for subsidiaries’ safety breaches?

In June 2012, a worker was seriously injured when he fell from the bucket of a loader in which he was working at a mine in Broken Hill.  The mine was operated by a company called Perilya Broken Hill Limited (PHBL).  As a result of the incident, both PBHL, and its parent company, Perilya Limited (Perilya),

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March 5
2018
Work health and safety

StevensVuaran Lawyers in this month’s Australian Dairy Foods magazine

From time to time, we like to spread the word  of what we do beyond the corners of this website. The word has spread as far as this month’s edition of Australian Dairy Foods Magazine, which includes an article by Angus on the legal implications of monitoring employee communications (arising from a recent case in

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March 28
2017
Agribusiness law Employment Law

Fiduciary duties, with your choice of chips or salad

When it comes to my favourite things, I never really could get into raindrops on roses, or whiskers on kittens.  Fiduciary duties and chicken schnitzels, however, are pretty high on my list.  So you can imagine my delight when I saw that these two of my favourite things had been brought together in a recent

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March 21
2017
Employment Law

Work safety in the gig economy – riding or colliding?

This is a story about vicious cycles.  In the late 1990s, the CBDs of Australian cities were full of vicious cycles, propelled by vicious (or, at least, more than a little assertive) bicycle couriers.  Then, for a while, the vicious cycles seemed to disappear (perhaps because the rise of email made it easy to send

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March 15
2017
Work health and safety

How not to do redundancies

“Act in haste, repent at leisure” is a proverb which comes up so often in employment law that I have sometimes been tempted to get myself a tattoo of those words.  (If the tattoo was not to my liking, of course, the tattoo would then itself be a perfect example of the proverb).  A recent

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March 7
2017
Employment Law

Proposed Fair Work Act changes put franchisors on the hook for franchisee underpayments

A series of recent news reports about underpayments in franchised businesses should have caused prudent franchisors to consider whether their franchise operations contained adequate workplace compliance systems.  However, even imprudent franchisors would probably not have considered that they might face the risk of direct liability for the sins of their franchisees. That looks set to

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March 2
2017
Franchising Law