The cost consultant joined as a defendant in the trial over alleged misconduct by the Banksia class action legal team has died, the second person implicated in the fee scandal to die this year.
Lawyer Alex Elliott was complicit in a plan by his late father to mislead the court and group members in the Banksia class action, to conceal conflicts of interest and to profit from the case at the expense of debenture holders, a judge has been told.
The Murray Goulburn class action run by Elliott Legal bears similarities to the Banksia class action, a case rife with scandal and offered up by opponents as proof of the problems with the class action regime. The leading lawyers were the same in both cases. In one they have abandoned any claim to their fees and have walked away from their careers. In the other they walked away with $5 million.
An appeals court has dismissed a second bid by lawyer Alex Elliott to have the judge overseeing the Banksia class action disqualified from hearing claims that he, like his late father, was party to an alleged fraudulent scheme in running the litigation.
In an “ode to a dying corporation” a Western Australia judge known for his droll judgments has waxed poetic in approving the end of a quarter century of litigation over the collapse of Alan Bond’s Bell Group of companies, penning what he described in mock solemnity as “more of a requiem than a judgment”.
The Morrison government has announced significant reforms to insolvency laws as part of its economic recovery plan that take inspiration from US chapter 11 laws, but Australia’s peak legal body has said the timeframe for the changes and lack of consultation were “very concerning”.
The Queensland Supreme Court has shot down an “entirely speculative” bid by two Clive Palmer-owned companies to access information held by two law firms and a litigation funder, as the mining magnate mulls a lawsuit for potential breaches of a settlement reached in the Queensland Nickel liquidation proceedings.
The director of the beleaguered Mayfair investment group, who has been self-represented in winding up proceedings by ASIC, has now entered into a late stage retainer with law firm Ashurst, with his barrister saying he could no longer manage the case on his own after the regulator filed a lengthy affidavit.
A judge has ordered 17 companies connected to Mayfair’s “failed” IPO Wealth Fund to be wound up after finding the fund’s director put investor money at risk through “highly speculative” investments to make a windfall for himself.
Companies associated with Mayfair’s IPO Wealth Fund should be wound up because they contained assets “artificially inflated” in value and ran what was effectively a Ponzi scheme, the Victoria Supreme Court has heard.