Responding to a judge’s criticism of the class action “beauty parade”, two rival law firms have come up with a plan to deal with their competing shareholder class actions against Brambles.
An ecological landscaper suing the Retail Employees Superannuation Trust fund for an undeveloped climate change policy has lost an application for a maximum costs order in the public-interest case.
From a record-setting funder’s cut to the first call for ‘“proportionality”, last year saw a number of groundbreaking judgments approving class action settlements worth more than half a billion dollars. Here are the 10 biggest settlements of 2018, and the law firms and funders that negotiated them.
US-based chemical and materials technology company Cytec Industries has successfully opposed an application by chemical company Nalco for an Australian patent for preventing sediment buildup on mining equipment.
JP Morgan, the reported whistleblower behind a criminal cartel case against ANZ, Deutsche Bank and Citigroup over a $2.5 billion share placement, has won its bid to keep documents from a related ASIC probe confidential.
The applicant in a class action against Ford over allegedly defective PowerShift transmissions has taken another stab at bringing an unconscionable conduct claim, after the judge overseeing the case panned an earlier pleading as “problematic”.
The Australian Securities and Investments Commission has not ruled out a challenge to a ruling that two Westpac subsidiaries didn’t provide personal financial advice as part of a campaign encouraging customers to roll over external superannuation accounts.
Unilever’s allegations that consumer goods competitor Beiersdorf made misleading claims about its Nivea clinical strength deodorant products don’t pass the smell test, a judge has found.
Seven class actions against auto makers that sold cars equipped with defective Takata airbags can allege the car makers’ silence constituted misleading and deceptive conduct.
The Commonwealth has urged the court to strike out the “inconsistent” pleadings of pharmaceutical firms Otsuka and Bristol-Myers Squibb in a patent case over the antipsychotic drug Abilify, calling them a “scandal” which could bring disrepute to the administration of justice.