Customers of wealth manager Colonial First State were $10 million to $12 million better off without a litigation funder in a class action over the slow transfer of accounts to low cost MySuper funds, a judge has found.
An appeals court has shot down funder Augusta’s challenge to a decision that cut its commission in the Opal Tower class action, putting funders on notice that they will have to marshal compelling evidence to win approval for their returns from an increasingly watchful court.
The law firm that ran a class action over the 2009 Montara oil spill must compete to administer a $192.5 million settlement, with a judge saying a tendering process is consistent with the court’s “protective and supervisory role” in managing costs deducted from class action settlements.
The funder in the Opal Tower class action has appealed a judge’s decision to slash its commission for not disclosing proposed deductions from the settlement sum as percentages, telling the Full Court that group members could do “simple arithmetic”.
Lawyerly’s Litigation Law Firms of 2022 racked up precedent-setting victories in a year that continued to see major developments in class action law.
A judge has largely approved the funder’s commission and legal fees to be deducted from a $192.5 million settlement of a class action against oil company PTTEP, despite the costs halving the amount to go to group members.
A judge has approved a $192.5 million settlement in an oil spill class action on behalf of Indonesian seaweed farmers, but the slice for the law firm running the action and its litigation funder remains to be determined amid allegations of negligence by the former lead applicant in the case.
A judge has dismissed Uber’s application to trim down a class action brought by taxi and hire car drivers in four states over the introduction of UberX, finding that cutting claims related to the hire care driver group would cause “real prejudice”.
Uber wants to trim a class action by taxi and hire drivers in four states over the introduction of UberX, saying the case lacks coherence.
Class action settlement sums reached new highs last year, with the ten largest agreements totalling almost $1 billion, almost half of which was secured by one plaintiff law firm.