The Queensland law firm at the centre of a class action over legal fees wants the case thrown out as an abuse of process, after it was revealed that the lead plaintiff apparently sold her litigation rights to a litigation funder, whose sole director is married to the solicitor who filed the action.
Expect increasing emphasis by judges on how much class action members will pocket, as scrutiny of settlements in representative proceedings continues to ramp up, says King & Wood Mallesons in the law firm’s latest class action report.
A judge has ordered engineering services firm CIMIC Group to pay the costs of a 2017 attempt to stay a competing class action against it, saying the bid was one the company “could never have successfully prosecuted”.
A judge has quietly given his seal of approval to a settlement distribution scheme in a class action against KPMG, after raising questions about Piper Alderman’s legal bill and the litigation funder’s “arguably excessive” cut of the confidential settlement.
An elite Melbourne law firm has become the latest target of Slater & Gordon shareholders whose stock went south after the plaintiffs firm’s disastrous $1.2 billion acquisition of UK professional services outfit Quindell, facing a class action alleging it was negligent in its role conducting due diligence for the deal.
A class action alleging travel agency Scenic Tours owes damages to European cruise passengers forced to take buses when heavy rain flooded waterways is still proceeding despite an impending High Court appeal, with the tour company now seeking to argue in an amended defence that class members could not reasonably rely on it to control water levels.
The plaintiffs firms running rival shareholder class actions against construction giant Lendlease have pitched a proposal to join their competing cases, a plan that should find favour with the judge overseeing the cases, who recently forced the consolidation of three duplicate class actions against failed engineering firm RCR Tomlinson.
The family of an Australian national who was killed aboard Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 is challenging a ruling that blocked it from participating in a recent class action settlement.
Labour hire company Workpac is seeking to stay two class actions over leave entitlements allegedly owed coal miners, amid a looming judgment from the Full Federal Court that will clarify the definition of casual employees.
The Federal Government is facing a class action over its Centrelink robodebt scheme that alleges 400,000 notices issued by Centrelink since 2016 have illegally sought to recover debts.