A court has appointed a referee to examine whether a law firm’s communications with Golden Financial furthered a plan by the financial advisory firm to divert assets to minimise a penalty sought by the corporate regulator in the first case alleging a breach of the so-called best interest duty.
A senior barrister who represented Mayfair 101 founder James Mawhinney in mediation of two cases last year has been allowed to appear against him at a hearing in another dispute against a lender and two McGrathNicol receivers, but the silk won’t participate in settlement talks.
A wife employed by her barrister husband can seek compensation for unpaid wages because the claim is based on their employment relationship not their marital relationship, a court has held.
A judge has approved a $12 million payment to the funder of two franchisee class actions against 7-Eleven, even as the funder plans to appeal a decision rejecting its bid for a common fund order for a $24.5 million commission.
The question of power to make a common fund order at the end of a class action was no longer a hypothetical one and it was time to send the issue to the Full Federal Court. That’s what the 7-Eleven class action judge was told 15 months ago but he failed to heed the advice, resulting in a court deeply divided and funders clamouring for reform.
A judge has blessed a law firm’s $16.6 million legal bill for running two franchisee class actions against 7-Eleven despite a contradictor’s argument that it had a “troubling” practice of deferring its fees to benefit the funder that bankrolled the cases.
The High Court killed off all common fund orders, not just the kind sought at the start of a class action, a judge has said as he cut in half the payout for a litigation funder bankrolling two franchisee class actions against 7-Eleven.
Courts stepped up their scrutiny of class action settlements in 2022, with judges grappling with difficult issues such as funding commissions in employment cases and whether settlements, even those worth hundreds of millions of dollars, were fair to group members.
A judge has thrown out an underpayments class action against NSW not-for-profit Life Without Borders for failure to advance the case with due diligence and slapped the lead applicant with costs for his “unreasonable” acts during the course of the proceeding.
Liberty Financial unit Minerva has challenged a judgment that found two schemes it carried out were done with the primary purpose of securing a tax advantage.