Australia’s four biggest lenders had an expensive year in court last year, but with cases spilling over into the new year and the fallout from the Royal Commission expected to see a litigation blitz by regulators and class action lawyers, much more is in store for the banks in 2019. Here, Lawyerly takes a look at the court cases facing ANZ Banking Group, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, National Australia Bank and Westpac Banking Corp so far this year.
From a record-setting funder’s cut to the first call for ‘“proportionality”, last year saw a number of groundbreaking judgments approving class action settlements worth more than half a billion dollars. Here are the 10 biggest settlements of 2018, and the law firms and funders that negotiated them.
Defunct financial adviser Dover Financial is seeking evidence to bolster its argument that no clients were harmed by a liability waiver that’s at the centre of a lawsuit by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission.
A challenge to the legality of common fund orders, an appeal to the High Court over the power of judges to stay competing cases, one of the first judgments in a shareholder class action and reform proposals promise to make 2019 another action-packed year in class actions. Here, experts give their predictions for the class action landscape this year.
Last year was an exciting one for class action lawyers, with monumental court decisions on competing cases, cross-jurisdictional spats, proportionality in settlements and the power of judges to decide how a recovery is distributed. Here, top class action litigators tell us what the most significant rulings of 2018 were and why the decisions will continue to matter this year.
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Law firm Squire Patton Boggs is taking a fight over a ruling that shut down its shareholder class action against logistics startup GetSwift to the High Court.
Digital ad startup Unlockd was forced to drop its competition lawsuit against Google in October after entering administration, but the issue may yet be revived by the regulator, which has revealed a misuse of market power probe is underway, and it has the contours of the startup’s case.
The director of property spruiker We Buy Houses has appealed a record $6 million for misleading property investors with claims they could learn to buy real estate for $1.
A lingering dispute with the tax office remains, but the distribution of the record $795 million Black Saturday class actions settlement is substantially complete, according to a report out this week, and the proceedings, by the measure of at least one expert, show why the class action system in Australia is working.