More than a decade after the High Court ruled that third parties could finance legal proceedings in Australia, the court has issued another game changing decision that puts limits on what judges will do to help a litigation funder out. Here, Lawyerly gives you a quick guide to the key takeaways from Wednesday’s judgment.
Judges have no power to order all class action members to pay a proportion of a litigation funder’s commission out of their share of a settlement, the High Court has ruled in a landmark judgment that deals a huge defeat to litigation funders.
The High Court is poised this week to issue its judgment in a case challenging the validity of common fund orders in class actions, a ruling that could see litigation funding commission rates creep back up after hitting record lows.
Arguing the court was wrong to rule that its trade mark was not inherently distinctive, Bendigo and Adelaide Bank is challenging a judgment that revoked its 20-year-old mark for ‘Community Bank’.
The Full Federal Court has handed a win to Hytera in its high-stakes intellectual property litigation with Motorola, allowing the Chinese radio manufacturer to file an amended defence arguing Motorola should have alerted it to the alleged theft of its source code by former employees sooner.
Motorola has urged the Full Federal Court to uphold a decision dismissing an amended defence by Chinese rival Hytera Communications that sought to blame the US tech company for not alerting it to the alleged theft of its source code sooner, saying a similar argument had already failed in an ongoing trade secrets case in the US.
HWL Ebsworth claims it was justified in firing a former partner for being dishonest about why he printed out confidential material, as the firm challenges a $450,000 unfair dismissal judgment.
Shareholders have appealed a ruling that found a “serious problem” with market-based causation and dismissed three cases against the liquidator of failed global financial services firm Babcock & Brown.
Mining services company Thiess is challenging a ruling in a class action that put it on the hook for paying workers for time spent bussing to and from their work stations at a construction site on Woodside Energy’s Pilbara-based LNG processing plant.
The ABC and Fairfax have lost their bid to file an amended defence in defamation proceedings brought by Chinese businessman Chau Chak Wing, several months after the Full Federal Court upheld a ruling striking out out the publishers’ truth defence.