Ian Hughes

Highlights of Ian’s 25 years in commercial litigation include:

• 1984 – 1985 Successfully defending the Australian Red Cross in the Supreme Court of Queensland and ultimately the High Court of Australia, in relation to one of the world’s first cases of alleged negligence resulting from transfusion of HIV-contaminated blood.  At the same time successfully establishing the Australian Red Cross’s rights to indemnity which had been denied by its insurer.
• 1985 – 1986 Acting for a senior agent in a major life insurance industry test case concerning loans by National Mutual (now AXA) worth some $400 million.
• 1987 – 1989 Successfully defending leading consulting engineers from Supreme Court damages claims for alleged negligence in design of the Hinze dam in south east Queensland.
• 1990 – 1992 Successfully acting for Italian government-owned Ente Nazionale Idrocarburi (ENI) and subsidiaries AgipCoal SpA and AgipCoal Australia to recover $15 million damages for breaches of fiduciary duty by Japanese joint venturers in the Ensham coal consortium.  Successfully defending counterclaims against ENI and AgipCoal SpA that they had wrongly preferred their coal interests in Venezuala and elsewhere in breach of their consortium obligations.
• 1992 – 1994 Successfully settling a major Federal Court action by Charter Pacific Corporation against CSIRO and the Reserve Bank of Australia in relation to a joint venture to commercialise anti-counterfeiting technology.
• 1994 – 1998 Successfully settling claims for over $100 million by Mackay Refined Sugar against CSR Limited in an action concerning alleged anti-competitive conduct by CSR in seeking to prevent a new entrant competing in the Australian and New Zealand refined sugar markets.
• 1998 Acting to recover damages for breaches of Trade Practices Act involving the QSC (then the Queensland government’s single desk seller) alleged preferential sugar supply arrangements with CSR allowing it to adopt its anti-competitive practices.  Settled simultaneously with CSR litigation.
• 1996 – 2000 Successfully settling a further action against CSIRO claiming damages for breach of the 1994 Settlement Agreement – referred to above.
• 2001 – 2002 Advising the Panama Canal Commission in relation to claims for heavy equipment sourced from Australia.
• 2001 – 2002 Advising the United States Department of Navy in relation to damages claims against the Queensland government in relation to alleged negligence in wrongly placing navigation markers in a port channel causing damage to a US warship.
• 2003 – 2004 Successfully overseeing the legal strategy for Peptech Limited to manage US, British, German, Swiss and Caribbean lawyers in its patent dispute with Abbott Pharmaceuticals over Abbott’s use of patented antibodies in its blockbuster drug, Humira.
• 2005 Acting for DeLaval International in a patent dispute with the European Union concerning RFID identification technology.
• 2006 – 2008 Acting for a leading Australian bank defending claims for alleged failure to provide funding for a major property development in south east Queensland.
• 2008 Successfully acting for ABC Learning Centres and its receivers in blocking ABC’s temporary staff providers’ attempts to prevent them sourcing hundreds of staff from competing organisations.

Professional Background