Background: Five jointly heard petitions challenged National Infrastructure Plan 101/C, covering the 26.5-kilometer northern segment of the Tel Aviv metropolitan area’s M1 metro line, including 20 underground stations and a maintenance and operations depot. Two petitions challenged the route through Hod Hasharon, seeking a southern alignment and a station near the Neve Ne’eman employment district, or…
Held: The Court unanimously dismissed all five petitions. Justice David Mintz, joined by Justices Yael Wilner and Khaled Kabub, held that courts do not sit as a “super-planning authority” and will not substitute their judgment for the professional judgment of planning institutions absent a fundamental administrative defect, such as lack of authority, improper considerations, bad faith, or extreme unreasonableness. That restraint…
Background: Rizwan Ahmad submitted a PhD thesis at the University of Sydney Business School. Two external examiners concluded that it did not satisfy the requirements for a PhD, and the examination committee recommended that he instead receive a Master of Philosophy after making specified corrections. Ahmad rejected that outcome and, without using the University's internal academic-appeal…
Held: Griffiths AJ proceeded in Ahmad's absence because he had adequate notice of the hearing. The Court held that leave was required because the challenged order arose from an application for summary judgment. Leave was refused because Ahmad identified no error in the Registrar's orders or reasons and established no issue of principle, question of public importance, or reasonably clear injustice…
Background: An employee of Fluides Service Distribution (FSD) resigned effective September 28, 2018, and joined its competitor, Electronics & Pool Accessories Import (EPAI), on October 1, 2018. His employment contract was transferred in 2019 to EPAI’s subsidiary, later renamed Global Solution Industrial Supplier (GSIS).
Held: The Court of Cassation held under Article 1240 of the Civil Code that appropriating confidential information belonging to a competitor and brought by a former employee constitutes unfair competition, even when the employee was not bound by a noncompetition clause.
Background: The parties married in July 1995 and obtained interim judgment in January 2024 after a marriage lasting approximately 28 years and six months. Their children were adults, leaving the division of matrimonial assets and maintenance for the wife as the only ancillary matters.
Held: The court treated the marriage as a long, dual-income marriage and applied the structured approach in ANJ v ANK. It accepted a direct-contribution ratio of 85.88:14.12 in the husband’s favour and an indirect-contribution ratio of 65:35 in the wife’s favour, giving each equal weight. Although the judgment’s table transposed the party labels, those figures mathematically produce an unadjusted ratio of…
Background: Inter Rao Lietuva AB operated in Lithuania as an independent electricity importer and supplier. In April 2022, Lithuania’s Financial Crime Investigation Department, known as the FNTT, placed the company on a national list of persons linked to targets of EU sanctions and froze its assets. The FNTT initially cited links to a sanctioned individual and…
Held: The CJEU held that EU law permits a Member State to place an unlisted legal person on a national asset-freeze list before allowing it to challenge the measure, where the surprise and immediate effect of the initial freeze are needed to prevent circumvention. Such a national listing implements the EU freeze rather than imposing a separate sanction. It is lawful,…
Background: Melissa Braucher and Gwen Earls, as administrator of Darrell Earls’s estate, sued spine surgeon Abubakar Atiq Durrani and the Center for Advanced Spine Technologies over surgeries they alleged were unnecessary and improperly performed. Their claims included negligence, lack of informed consent, battery, and fraudulent misrepresentation. The trial court consolidated the two cases for a one-week…
Held: The First District affirmed in part, reversed in part, and remanded. It held that Braucher’s evidence did not establish a catastrophic injury under R.C. 2323.43 because it did not show a permanent physical functional injury preventing her from independently caring for herself and performing life-sustaining activities. Her noneconomic-damages award therefore must be capped at $350,000 rather than $500,000.
Background: The dispute arose from an individual proceeding to liquidate and enforce a judgment entered in a public civil action concerning inflation-related losses on savings accounts under Brazil’s Summer Plan. The São Paulo Court of Justice upheld the liquidation calculation and ruled that all eligible savers could enforce the collective judgment, regardless of whether they were…
Held: The Fourth Panel unanimously declined to entertain the special appeal. It found no violation of Articles 489 or 1,022 of the Code of Civil Procedure because the state court had clearly and sufficiently addressed every argument capable of undermining its conclusion. Disagreement with the result did not establish an omission or denial of judicial review.
Background: Paul Michael Phang II, a rideshare driver, encountered a malfunctioning exit gate after dropping off a passenger inside a gated residential community at approximately 2:00 a.m. He called the posted assistance number four times over sixteen minutes but received no answer. He then pushed and pulled the community’s gates by hand, ultimately bending the exit…
Held: The Fourth District issued a per curiam affirmance of Phang’s conviction. The panel’s decision states only “Affirmed” and supplies no majority reasoning for rejecting his sufficiency challenge.
Background: Charles M. Barker III was cited for operating a motor vehicle while using a mobile electronic device, in violation of Hawaii Revised Statutes § 291C-137(a). After a trial de novo, the District Court of the Third Circuit entered judgment against him on October 31, 2024.
Held: The Intermediate Court of Appeals affirmed the traffic-infraction judgment. Barker did not order a transcript of the trial de novo, so the appellate record provided no basis to review his challenges to the sufficiency of the evidence or the officer’s observations. The court also declined to revisit witness credibility, explaining that credibility and evidentiary weight are matters for the factfinder.
Background: The applicant is the father of a girl born in 2013. The family had been known to welfare authorities since 2013, and the girl’s condition deteriorated after the father’s arrest in 2019 on suspicion of sexual offenses against the mother’s sisters. He was later convicted and was serving a prison sentence. In 2020, reports of…
Held: Justice Daphne Barak-Erez denied the father’s application for permission to appeal without requesting responses, under Regulation 148A of the Civil Procedure Regulations, 2018. The Court held that the application did not satisfy the standard for a third-tier appeal, even applying the more permissive standard used in proceedings concerning orders under the Youth (Care and Supervision) Law, 1960.
Background: Dr Ambrosios Kambouris petitioned for Terry Paule’s bankruptcy based on a Supreme Court of New South Wales judgment requiring Paule to pay him USD8,518,852.64. After numerous adjournments, Judicial Registrar Morgan ordered on 11 June 2026 that Paule’s estate be sequestrated. Paule sought review under s 35A(5) of the Federal Court of Australia Act 1976 (Cth),…
Held: Goodman J refused the adjournment. The Court held that Paule’s inconsistent positions and acknowledgment that he had knowingly misled two courts made his evidence unreliable. It would not serve creditors’ interests to delay the petition so they could consider a proposal dependent on representations from a debtor whose evidence the Court could not trust.
Background: SARL Guyane pièces auto sued SAS Guyane pièces auto in the Mixed Commercial Court of Cayenne for unfair competition, alleging misappropriation of its corporate name and trade name. The plaintiff sought to stop the defendant from using the name “Guyane pièces auto.”
Held: The Court of Cassation held that the Court of Appeal had wrongly applied Article L. 716-5(II). When the Mixed Commercial Court ruled on jurisdiction, the defendant owned no trademark in force whose exercise could be affected by the requested injunction. The unfair-competition claim therefore required neither examination of the existence or infringement of trademark rights nor application of intellectual-property rules…