A judge has dispensed with the opt out notice requirement in two class actions filed in administration proceedings related to the spectacular collapse of HIH Insurance.
A judge who signed off on a contested $36.5 million settlement to resolve a $1 billion class action against Slater & Gordon has explained his reasons a year later, saying the “unusual” deal flowed from the law firm’s “dire financial situation”.
The former CEO of Radio Rentals, James Marshall, has been dragged into a consumer class action alleging he knew the home goods rental company pushed misleading leases onto vulnerable consumers.
JP Morgan, the reported whistleblower behind a criminal cartel case against ANZ, Deutsche Bank and Citigroup over a $2.5 billion share placement, has won its bid to keep documents from a related ASIC probe confidential.
A judge has allowed an assessment of Gadens’ legal costs in a dispute with a client over $665,000 in fees, saying while the application had been filed out of time, the law firm seemed to have done “little by way of compliance” with its costs disclosure obligations.
The Australian Competition & Consumer Commission is considering whether a divestment offer by waste management company Bingo Industries will address concerns the regulator has raised about the company’s proposed acquisition of Dial-a-Dump Industries.
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.
Accounting firm Pitcher Partners has been ordered to pay more than $5.6 million in damages for fraudulently concealing an amortisation error that caused a well-known bus operator to face higher than expected costs in a NSW transport tender.
Majority shareholders in MWL Financial have won court approval to bring a derivative suit against US-based Focus Financial Partners over an acquisition gone sour.
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.