Bernard Quinn

A court has held that a “nuanced” business model used by a rental company providing long-term leases to often vulnerable consumer for household items breached the Credit Act, finding the loan agreements were in substance credit contracts. Federal Court Justice Lisa Hespe found on Wednesday that Rent4Keeps attempted to avoid being caught by the Credit…

Advisory firm Lanterne Fund, which operated as a ‘licensee for hire’, has been hit with a $1.25 million penalty for breaching its obligations as a financial services licence holder.

A judge has ordered soft class closure ahead of mediation in a class action against five major banks over alleged foreign exchange rate-rigging, saying the applicant’s subjective view on what will assist mediation should not be imposed on the banks.

A judge has questioned the applicant’s opposition to soft class closure in a class action accusing five major banks of rate-rigging, a measure the banks say could save “tens of millions” in legal expenses. 

Slater and Gordon has agreed to consolidate its data breach class action against Medibank with one brought by Baker McKenzie, after the judge overseeing the cases railed against competing class actions.

A fed-up judge has vented his frustration with the problem of competing class actions in a move that appears to punish the second filed case against Medibank. But is he right that the courts are increasingly being asked to deal with duplicative proceedings? And was his order really all that drastic?

A judge aggrieved by the “plague” of competing class actions in the courts has temporarily stayed a second data breach class action against Medibank, and directed the health insurer to ask the privacy commissioner to drop the investigation of a third case.

Sixteen law firms and accounting firms have thrown their hat in the ring to administer a $300 million settlement in two class actions against Johnson & Johnson over pelvic mesh devices that injured thousands of women.

A costs report in a settled class action against Woolworths that recommended almost $800,000 in legal fee deductions failed to wrestle with a key factor in weighing the proportionality of the costs, a judge has said.

A judge has approved a $33 million settlement in a class action against vocational education provider Box Hill Institute, but taken the ax to a law firm’s proposed 18.25 per cent loading on its fees, saying courts shouldn’t approve uplifts for run of the mill legal work.