A judge overseeing a joint class action against Freedom Foods and Deloitte wants to break a bad habit among litigators of attaching to affidavits reams of correspondence between solicitors, and she has a message for legal practitioners — the court is not interested in what lawyers say to each other.
Technology company Nuix has been hit with a third shareholder class action over its troubled $1.8 billion float on the ASX, setting up what is likely to be the first beauty parade in the Supreme Court of Victoria since the state allowed class action lawyers to seek a cut of any settlement or judgment.
The liquidator of collapsed vocational education provider Careers Australia can serve its lawsuit on two of the company’s former directors now living overseas, after a judge found a prima facie case of insolvent trading and breaches of directors duties had been made out.
A judge will approve a $28 million settlement resolving a class action against Arnold Bloch Leibler over advice the law firm gave to Slater & Gordon ahead of a disastrous acquisition. A 28 per cent commission for the case’s funder will also get the court’s nod.
Another fight over privilege may be on the cards in a shareholder class action over the collapse of the Hastie Group, with Deloitte flagging its partners may claim privilege over certain parts of the accounting giant’s evidence.
The Australian Securities and Investments Commission has dropped all but one claim against Rio Tinto in a four-year-long case over disclosures related to its troubled $5.8 billion acquisition of a Mozambique coal mining business and abandoned all claims against the mining giant’s former CEO and CFO.
Judgments shooting down a class closure order and nixing notice of a possible class closure order were “plainly wrong” and “infected” by faulty reasoning, the Full Federal Court has heard.
Logistics company GetSwift will argue on appeal that a judge who found the company took a “PR-driven approach” to ASX statements was wrong in his assessment of whether those statements contained material omissions.
A second class action investigation against regenerative medicine company Mesoblast is underway, this one looking at claim it misled shareholders about the potential application of a developmental stem cell product to treat terminally-ill children.
Philanthropist and Wotif founder Graeme Wood will have to pay more than $15 million after the Victoria Supreme Court found one of his companies had breached an agreement to act as guarantor for the $73 million sale of a Queensland aquaculture business.