The Morrison government has picked Federal Court Justices Simon Steward and Jacqueline Gleeson to fill the impending vacancies on the High Court.
A judge’s decision to throw out a shareholder class action against engineering company Worley is a loss for plaintiffs lawyers and could result in fewer listed companies willing to settle cases alleging they breached their disclosure obligations, but the ruling is not likely to have a significant chilling effect on securities litigation.
A sense of frustration with current uncertainty in the caselaw and inconsistency in the approaches of judges was a prominent theme that emerged from personal interviews with 30 experienced class action practitioners conducted over two months by Dr Peter Cashman and Amelia Simpson of the University of New South Wales.
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.
Forty-four barristers have ascended to the senior counsel ranks in NSW and Victoria, including the barrister that represented Geoffrey Rush in his high-profile defamation victory and a member of the legal team that successfully defended Westpac against ASIC’s infamous ‘Wagyu beef and shiraz’ case.
Sports presenter Erin Molan has fired off a defamation lawsuit over the Daily Mail’s coverage of a remark she made during Nine’s Continuous Call radio program which she claims implied she was a racist who deliberately mocked the names of Pacific Islanders on air.
As the economic impact of Covid-19 continues to develop, we can expect promoters of class actions to explore claims which arise from the pandemic – some of these will be in familiar territory, whilst other claim may be novel, say Herbert Smith Freehills’ Harry Edwards and Dylan O’Keefe.
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 funder backing a shareholder class action against the directors of pharmaceutical firm QRxPharma will not seek to profit from a $7 million settlement in order to bring about a better return for group members, a judge has been told.