Wealth manager IOOF is facing a shareholder class action alleging it failed to tell investors that misconduct aired at the Banking Royal Commission would put it in the crosshairs of Australia’s financial regulator.
Two rulings Friday keeping alive the common fund order are a ringing endorsement by the courts of the important role that litigation funders play in class actions, experts say, and have paved the way for more funded post-Hayne consumer litigation against banks and other financial services firms this year.
Common fund orders in class actions are legal and not unconstitutional, six judges found Friday after a history-making joint sitting of two appeals courts.
GetSwift has warned it may seek an injunction blocking Johnson Winter & Slattery from acting as instructing lawyers to the corporate cop in its enforcement action against the logistics company, saying the firm provided advisory work for it last year.
A state judge has ordered the litigation funders behind a group of federal class actions against AMP to pay the legal costs of their failed transfer applications, saying while he could not make the applicants pay, he could compel the funders to cough up the money.
Judgments in two appeals challenging the legality of common fund orders issued by courts in class actions will be handed down this week, and the rulings could have a profound effect on how class actions are run by lawyers and their funders in the future.
Global insurer Jardine Lloyd Thompson has won access to the identities of local councils suing it in a NSW class action brought by Quinn Emanuel alleging the broker charged the councils excessive premiums.
A judge won’t defer the opt-out notice in a shareholder class action against GetSwift pending the High Court’s decision on a special leave application to revive a competing class action, saying the sooner the case settles the better.
Common fund orders are the completion of the notion of class actions envisaged when the regime was introduced 27 years ago, a joint-sitting of two appeals courts was told on the second and last day of a landmark challenge to what has become an oft-used case management tool by trial judges.
An appeal before a historic joint sitting of two courts over so-called common fund orders in class actions kicked off Monday with a full bench of six judges and a packed courtroom hearing arguments by eminent barristers for BMW and Westpac that the orders are either preemptive or pointless.