The son of the funder behind a class action at the centre of scandalous misconduct claims says he would have sought advice from a family friend if he had realised his father and counsel leading the case were misleading the court to inflate their profits from a $64 million settlement.
Solicitor Alex Elliott has said it never clicked with him that members of the legal team running the Banksia class action were misleading an appeals court when his father — the mastermind behind the alleged deception — told him to sign cheques for lawyers that they could not cash.
The funder accused of a fraudulent scheme to pocket inflated fees from the Banksia Securities class action produced less than 200 documents to the contradictor in the case and invented a story about a routine email purging practice to explain the discovery hole, a court has heard.
A sacked Norton Rose Fulbright partner is challenging a $160,000 award handed down by a judge who found the law firm intentionally deceived him in litigation over his dismissal, arguing the sum is “manifestly inadequate”.
The ACCC has reached the end of the line in its challenge to Pacific National’s $205 million acquisition of Aurizon’s Acacia Ridge Terminal in Queensland, with the High Court dismissing the competition regulator’s application to take up the appeal.
Casual workers will have the option of permanent employment after 12 months under the Morrison government’s industrial relations omnibus bill to be unveiled this week, but the legislation will also scale back what damages casuals can pocket in legal action over misclassification.
A judge has ordered the winding up of a managed investment scheme operated by Perth businessman Chris Marco and his company AMS Holdings after investors allegedly lost more than $200 million.
A court battle between the Australian Taxation Office and PricewaterhouseCoopers over the scope of legal professional privilege claimed by one of its major clients, meat processing giant JBS Australia, has hit a preliminary snag over the consulting giant’s representation of JBS, with a judge warning he might compel the company and its subsidiaries to engage independent lawyers.
A judge has given his blessing to investors to pursue a class action against financial services firm Linchpin Capital and its subsidiary Endeavour Securities, saying there was a strong possibility the failed companies’ alleged liability would be covered by an insurance policy.
A bid by the applicant to restrict a securities class action against recycling company Sims Metal Management to shareholders who have registered to join the case has been shot down by a judge, who said the application was not in the interests of justice but “in the interests of injustice”.