A sought-after court order by organic baby food maker Bellamy’s to limit legal costs in two class actions won’t come without a fight, a barrister for the shareholders said Friday.
The corporate watchdog’s dim view of proposals to regulate litigation funders got a mixed reaction from big players in the industry Thursday, with its position supported by foreign funders but frowned on by at least one home-grown firm.
Litigation funders should not be regulated by ASIC but by the courts, the corporate watchdog has told the Australian Law Reform Commission in response to proposals to overhaul the class action regime and subject funders to licensing requirements.
Accounting giant Deloitte is digging in for a fight over a court order to produce documents to a shareholder class over the firm’s auditing of collapsed engineering company Hastie Group, saying partners forced to hand over the files don’t have access to them.
Supermarket giant Woolworths has been hit with a class action on behalf of investors who allegedly suffered losses when the company revised its sales and profit guidance and revealed it had been using the wrong pricing competitiveness and stock availability metrics.
Mortgage aggregator Connective Group has lost an appeal of a ruling that gave the greenlight to a shareholder’s derivative lawsuit against company directors and Macquarie Bank over the sale of 25 percent of the business to the bank.
A court has struck out defamation claims brought by embattled Quintis founder Frank Wilson against the company’s former directors over ASX statements he alleges suggested he knew about the company’s termination of a supply contract with Nestle’s dermatology unit, Galderma Laboratories.
The litigation funder that unsuccessfully sought to block a shareholder from opposing a $64 million class action settlement over the collapse of Banksia Securities is not on the hook for indemnity costs despite bringing the injunction with an ulterior motive.
A year after the Federal Court issued its important ruling on competing class actions and foreshadowed orders prohibiting duplicative legal fees, the company at the centre of the proceedings — organic baby food maker Bellamy’s — has called on the court to make good on its promise about costs.
ASIC has taken two NAB wealth management units to court for allegedly charging superannuation members around $100 million in fees for services they never received.