Slater and Gordon has agreed to consolidate its data breach class action against Medibank with one brought by Baker McKenzie, after the judge overseeing the cases railed against competing class actions.
A fed-up judge has vented his frustration with the problem of competing class actions in a move that appears to punish the second filed case against Medibank. But is he right that the courts are increasingly being asked to deal with duplicative proceedings? And was his order really all that drastic?
A judge aggrieved by the “plague” of competing class actions in the courts has temporarily stayed a second data breach class action against Medibank, and directed the health insurer to ask the privacy commissioner to drop the investigation of a third case.
Sixteen law firms and accounting firms have thrown their hat in the ring to administer a $300 million settlement in two class actions against Johnson & Johnson over pelvic mesh devices that injured thousands of women.
A costs report in a settled class action against Woolworths that recommended almost $800,000 in legal fee deductions failed to wrestle with a key factor in weighing the proportionality of the costs, a judge has said.
A judge has approved a $33 million settlement in a class action against vocational education provider Box Hill Institute, but taken the ax to a law firm’s proposed 18.25 per cent loading on its fees, saying courts shouldn’t approve uplifts for run of the mill legal work.
A judge overseeing the trial in a shareholder class action against chain logistics company Brambles has questioned the company’s use of long-term financial forecasts.
A judge has signed off on a $44.5 million settlement of a shareholder class action against Woolworths, which includes a $4.73 million funding commission, but the amount of fees to be paid to the law firm running the case remains to be decided.
A judge has ordered that $1.27 million be set aside to cover the costs of the law firm administering the settlement in the class action over the federal government’s Robodebt scheme, cutting about $1 million from the figure sought.
The law firm administering the $112 million Robodebt class action settlement has asked a court to sign off on a $2.2 million bill to cover the full projected costs of distributing the funds, a figure three times the estimate calculated by a costs referee.