Two former Dick Smith directors targeted by dual class actions have expanded their case against Deloitte over the retailer’s 2016 collapse, saying if the company was found liable for shareholder losses then the auditor should be blamed for its shoddy work on the company’s financial statements during its float three years earlier.
The plaintiffs in a farming class action brought against Advanta Seeds over allegedly contaminated sorghum have been denied access to the defendant’s insurance policy documents, after a judge found “significant differences” with a recently successful application in a class action against Radio Rentals.
The judge overseeing the long-running class action over allegedly faulty Ford PowerShift transmissions has told the applicants they might need to put up considerable cash security to cover the “war and peace of discovery” disputes, after Ford slammed the delayed request for documents as “complete and utter nonsense”.
Ernst & Young, which is facing a lawsuit brought by the receiver of a fund overseen by failed financial services firm LM Investment Management, has lost its bid to file a claim for damages against LMIM, with a judge saying the auditor’s case was “flawed” and “counterintuitive”.
After being flooded with phone calls by class members wanting a share of a recent $16.4 million settlement with Cash Converters, law firm Maurice Blackburn will implement an automated message system to handle queries from 164,000 group members in the settled class action against Radio Rentals.
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.
The Suncorp Group unit and directors at the centre of a class action over allegedly conflicted remuneration have slammed the case as “misconceived” and argue it was not validly commenced.
Westpac has offered an appeals court two more reasons to affirm its victory in a closely watched responsible lending case brought by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission over almost 262,000 home loans.
The plaintiffs in an investor class action filed against Dick Smith’s insurers want a separate hearing from four other representative and company proceedings against the failed electronics retailer, arguing there would be only the “thinnest basis” for concurrent proceedings if their strike out application was successful.
The hearing for a class action against National Australia Bank over allegedly worthless credit card insurance will focus on whether the bank’s allegedly unconscionable behaviour in selling these policies was systemic or confined to individual cases.