Boral has asked the Full Court to hear its appeal of a decision allowing its former CEO to be questioned about an email that mentioned a confidential EY report.
Trial in a shareholder class action against Boral has been halted amid an appeal over a decision to allow questioning of former CEO Michael Kane about an email that mentioned a confidential EY report.
Boral’s former CEO Michael Kane can be questioned at trial over a reference he made in an email to findings by EY about the building material group’s poor performing US windows business, despite claims that the findings were privileged.
Buoyed by the recent trial success of CBA and other companies facing shareholder ire, building materials giant Boral is taking its chances at a hearing in a class action alleging disclosure breaches linked to its US windows business.
The High Court has agreed to step in to resolve division among Australia’s courts on the question of power to make orders that exclude unregistered group members from class action settlements.
A shareholder class action against BHP has sought more time to finalise its pleadings ahead of trial, after a judge threw out two class actions against the Commonwealth Bank that also alleged continuous disclosure breaches.
BHP wants to appeal a decision giving a class action the OK to fix what a judge accepted was an “inadvertent mistake” that resulted in a ruling — itself the subject of an appeal — which limited the group member definition.
The judge overseeing a six-year-old class action against BHP over the collapse of a Brazilian dam has allowed the applicant to retroactively amend the group definition, accepting that a pleading mistake was contrary to the intended class membership in the case.
The High Court has been asked to overturn a NSW Court of Appeal decision finding it had no power to exclude unregistered group members from a settlement, which conflicted with Federal Court precedent, hearing the divergence of the important issue “can only be resolved by the High Court”.
The NSW Court of Appeal has said it has no power to exclude group members who do not sign up to a class action from participating in a settlement, upholding a controversial decision that the Full Federal Court said was “plainly wrong”.