Freedom Foods and its auditor Deloitte have been hit with a shareholder class action after a shock announcement last week of more than $590 million in write-downs stemming from accounting irregularities.
A judge has ruled that disaster payments cannot be taken into consideration in assessing damages in a long-running class action over the 2011 Queensland floods that destroyed 2,000 homes and claimed 12 lives.
Convenience store chain 7-Eleven has asked the High Court to find courts do not have the power to make common fund orders at settlement or judgment in a class action, one year after the High Court ruled common fund orders could not be made in the early part of a representative proceeding.
A judge has given his blessing to investors to pursue a class action against financial services firm Linchpin Capital and its subsidiary Endeavour Securities, saying there was a strong possibility the failed companies’ alleged liability would be covered by an insurance policy.
The applicant in a class action against labour hire firm One Key Resources has lost a lawsuit seeking preliminary discovery of liability insurance policies to potentially add One Key Workforce to the proceeding.
A bid by the applicant to restrict a securities class action against recycling company Sims Metal Management to shareholders who have registered to join the case has been shot down by a judge, who said the application was not in the interests of justice but “in the interests of injustice”.
The parties in a class action against AMP over changes to its buyer of last resort policy have agreed to a communications protocol making settlement offers and for releases attached to BOLR payments that require exiting financial advisers to waive their claims in the litigation.
The son of Banksia Securities class action funder Mark Elliott questioned his father on whether it was “right” to rip up a $64 million settlement with the collapsed lender’s trustee if the deal didn’t guarantee him a $12.8 million commission, a court has heard.
Lawyer Alex Elliott has told a judge he didn’t know when he postdated cheques for members of the Banksia class action legal team that it was done to mislead the appeals court in the case, but has admitted that in hindsight “it doesn’t look good”.
The Labor party has come up short in its effort to torpedo new regulations requiring litigation funders to hold a financial services licence and register class actions as managed investment schemes.