Alexander Edwards

The lead applicant in an unsuccessful class action over the Carwoola bushfire has avoided indemnity costs sought by insurer CGU and has won a 40 per cent reduction in the amount of legal costs it will have to cover for the defendant.

Two years after an insurance dispute scuttled a proposed settlement, group members in two class actions against sandalwood producer Quintis are set to receive $4.7 million in a settlement with the defunct company.

Recycling company Sims Limited will pay $29.5 million to settle a shareholder class action alleging earnings guidance for FY16 failed to account for the likely prospect of falling scrap metal prices.

Two insurers have won an appeal that blocks group members in a class action against sandalwood producer Quintis from receiving a further $11.25 million after a settlement was reached almost two years ago. 

Shareholders bringing a class action against Quintis have lost their bid for Ernst & Young to hand over documents from two meetings with a director of the sandalwood supplier, after a judge found they did not get “within a bull’s roar” of showing the accounting firm’s discovery was inadequate.

Engineering company Worley is challenging an appeals court ruling that allowed a shareholder class action against it to continue, arguing the Full Court’s finding that opinions which “ought reasonably to have been held” should be disclosed to shareholders would lead to “absurd consequences”.

An appeals court has sided with shareholders in their challenge to a ruling tossing a class action against engineering services company Worley, which was found to have had reasonable grounds for issuing overly rosy earnings guidance eight years ago.

While acknowledging it was a ‘loaded’ word, a judge has rejected a bid by the federal government to edit out the word ‘stolen’ from a notice to members of the third stolen wages class action brought by Shine Lawyers.

Worley’s increases to a budget behind an allegedly misleading 2014 earning guidance, amounting to $1.14 million, were a “drop in the ocean”, the Full Court has heard as shareholders seek to revive a failed class action against the engineering company.

A judge has allowed a new applicant to lead a shareholder class action against recycling company Sims Metal Management, ruling that he could not force the original applicant to continue in the role when it wanted to back out.