A judge overseeing a shareholder class action against Crown Resorts has ordered the casino giant to give details of board members’ knowledge about two bank accounts which were allegedly used to launder hundreds of millions of dollars.
Explaining his decision to reject a class action settlement that would have earned a law firm $1.75 million but provided nothing to 27,000 Woolworths employees, a judge has said the agreement created a conflict of interest between the solicitors and the workers they sought to set “adrift”.
The judge overseeing the scandal-ridden Banksia Securities class action has questioned why a solicitor on record for the case hasn’t handed over his ill-gotten fees despite professed regret for his actions and his claims to have reformed.
The behaviour of the legal team running the Banksia Securities class action was “reprehensible” and the solicitor who allowed himself to be controlled by lawyer and funder Mark Elliott should be struck from the court’s roll of practitioners, a judge heard Tuesday.
A class action over the failure of six managed investment schemes for eucalyptus wood in Tasmania has accused KPMG of failing to advise forestry giant Gunns that it had to tell growers about $720 million in financing it sought in 2007.
A solicitor fighting to remain on the roll after his involvement in the infamous Banksia Securities class action has told of his regret at having lunch with the funder behind the case eight years ago — a meeting that set in motion a plot driven by lawyers to deceive seven Supreme Court judges and defraud thousands of investors.
Shareholders bringing a class action against Quintis have lost their bid for Ernst & Young to hand over documents from two meetings with a director of the sandalwood supplier, after a judge found they did not get “within a bull’s roar” of showing the accounting firm’s discovery was inadequate.
The future of a class action against a Canberra property developer accused of misleading investors about GST on their apartments is in doubt after the litigation funder withdrew support for the “uneconomic” case.
Six more fertility clinics in states across the country are set to be pulled into a class action against Monash IVF on behalf of hundreds of men and women demanding damages for the alleged destruction of potentially viable embryos.
Philips Electronics has hit back at a class action over recalled sleep apnea machines that contained a foam component that could allegedly degrade and cause consumers to inhale dangerous chemicals, saying the devices were not defective when they were sold.