Qantas has filed a bid to delay a hearing on penalty after a judge found the airline outsourced ground operations partly to prevent employees engaging in industrial action, but the TWU has said a stay would be “unfair” to 1,600 former ground staff.
A ruling this week that rejected the first application for a group costs order in a class action because the applicants were better off with their existing no win, no fee arrangement was the right decision given the limits of the legislation, experts say.
Insurance broker JLT Risk Solutions has opposed an application by a group of NSW councils to add misleading and deceptive conduct allegations to a long-running class action, claiming the changes would force the vacation of a five-week trial due to start in October.
A judge has questioned whether he should allow prosecutors to amend charges against ANZ and its treasurer in a criminal cartel case over a $2.5 billion share placement after the bank argued the charges were defective and should be quashed.
Six of the world’s largest car makers have agreed to pay $52 million to settle class actions accusing them of selling cars with deadly Takata airbags.
Boral has denied that shareholders bringing two class actions against it over financial irregularities in its North America windows business suffered any loss, saying that its systems helped spot and prevent the financial manipulation from continuing.
Saying the interests of class action members “must be given primacy”, a judge has rejected the first bid for a group costs order in a class action since contingency fee legislation passed in Victoria.
A Federal Court judge has taken a swipe at new regulations that require class action funding arrangements to be registered as managed investment schemes, saying it was difficult to reconcile the new rules with the class action regime.
Despite COVID-19 case numbers in Australia hitting historic highs and the threat of an economic recession, law firms are cautiously optimistic about their ability to weather the storm without redundancies or reductions in staff pay.
Qantas Airways is seeking to overturn a Federal Court finding that its decision to axe 2,000 ground staff and replace them with labour hire workers during the COVID-19 pandemic was made partially to stop workers engaging in industrial action.