Class action settlement sums reached new highs last year, with the ten largest agreements totalling almost $1 billion, almost half of which was secured by one plaintiff law firm.
Ernst & Young has settled all claims against it in a shareholder class action alleging the Big Four accounting firm and Pitcher Partners signed off on an overly rosy year-end financial report that failed to disclose risks and impairments associated with the law firm’s disastrous $1.2 billion acquisition of UK insurance claims company Quindell.
A judge has panned ASIC’s bid to discover a wide range of privileged communications between super fund REST and various legal advisers, finding the regulator used a “very wide net” to catch nothing at all.
Mitsubishi has denied class action allegations that it made misleading fuel efficiency representations on labels affixed to the windshields of over 70,000 Triton Utes, and says it can’t be sued under the Australian Consumer Law because the labels were required by law.
Victorian aged care homes accused of “major failures” during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic have lost their bid to declass claims of neglect brought in two class actions on behalf of residents and their grieving families.
An appeals court has found that building company LU Simon should not pay $12 million in damages for a 2014 fire which broke out in Melbourne’s Lacrosse tower and was accelerated by Alucobest cladding panels since the company had relied on consultants’ advice in choosing the cladding material.
A judge has sided with five investments banks and rejected a bid to amend a class action alleging a series of cartel agreements to rig foreign exchange rates, saying there were “substantial problems” with the proposed pleadings.
Insurer Liberty Mutual is challenging its loss in a coverage dispute with construction company Icon Co over $31 million in losses stemming from Sydney’s Opal Tower, whose residents were evacuated after cracks appeared in the tower’s walls on Christmas Eve in 2018.
Owners of units in Sydney’s Opal Tower have filed a lawsuit against the NSW Government and builder Icon after allegedly discovering more than 500 additional defects in the troubled building.
A judge has signed off on a $49.5 million settlement in a class action against National Australia Bank over ‘junk insurance’, including millions in fees for the firm that brought the case on a no-win, no-fee basis, despite calling the settlement sum a “substantial compromise”.