The Federal Court has imposed a penalty of almost $5.2 million on AMP Financial Planning after finding it was “reckless” in its “lamentable failure” to properly respond to a now banned adviser who was churning life insurance for higher commissions.
Westpac is now facing at least eight class actions in various US courts seeking $200 million from the bank for allegedly failing to alert shareholders to violations of anti-money laundering laws.
A judge overseeing the first of what could be many shareholder class actions over Westpac’s anti-money laundering breaches — brought by class action specialists Phi Finney McDonald — has given other law firms a three-week deadline to notify the court if they plan to file competing proceedings.
A judge has consolidated competing shareholder class actions against builder Lendlease brought by rival plaintiffs law firms, but has rejected the firms’ bid to jointly run the litigation and says one of them must go.
A challenge by Quinn Emanuel to a NSW Supreme Court decision staying its shareholder class action against AMP has been unanimously dismissed by the Court of Appeal, which found the class action beauty contest was not decided in error and that subsequently filed representative proceedings were not an abuse of process.
A judge has given the thumbs up to AMP’s new program to identify and compensate victims of so-called insurance churning by its financial planning arm after inadequacies were revealed in the original scheme.
The plaintiffs firms running rival shareholder class actions against construction giant Lendlease have pitched a proposal to join their competing cases, a plan that should find favour with the judge overseeing the cases, who recently forced the consolidation of three duplicate class actions against failed engineering firm RCR Tomlinson.
The barrister leading an appeal seeking to revive Quinn Emanuel’s fees for no service class action against AMP has criticised the approach taken in the landmark GetSwift ruling on competing class actions, saying it placed the court in the role of auctioneer and actually encouraged duplicative proceedings.
Two competing shareholder class actions against developer Lendlease have been locked in for a beauty parade before the judge who recently forced the consolidation of three class actions against engineering firm RCR Tomlinson.
Law firm Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan will push forward with an investor class action against failed engineering company RCR Tomlinson on its own, with two firms driving competing actions agreeing to step down after a judge forcibly consolidated all three proceedings.