Companies and other defendants forked over big sums last year to settle more than 20 class actions, with a total of at least $734 million being paid out. Here are the top 10 class action settlements and the law firms and funders that negotiated them.
A beauty contest to lead a class action against Monsanto over its allegedly cancer-causing weedkiller Roundup could be on foot, with the US chemical giant now facing one class action in the Federal Court and another in the Victorian Supreme Court.
The funders behind two shareholder class actions against online fashion retailer Surfstitch Group will seek a commission of up to 30 per cent while the law firms that brought the cases will ask for approval of up to $6 million in legal fees during an upcoming settlement approval hearing, which also puts the fate of a deed of company arrangement that saved the company from liquidation on the line.
A judge has ordered the legal teams behind two settled Surfstitch class actions to have another crack at the opt out notice, saying the current version is “just too confusing” for group members.
Online fashion retailer Surfstitch has reached an in-principle settlement in two shareholder class actions, about nine months after an initial agreement to resolve the dispute derailed.
A challenge by Quinn Emanuel to a NSW Supreme Court decision staying its shareholder class action against AMP has been unanimously dismissed by the Court of Appeal, which found the class action beauty contest was not decided in error and that subsequently filed representative proceedings were not an abuse of process.
WorleyParsons has abandoned its mid-trial application to shut down a shareholder class action, amid uncertainty about whether the engineering company would be required to surrender its right to call reply evidence if it continued with its submission that it has no case to answer.
Counsel for WorleyParsons has denied the engineering firm’s attempt to end a shareholder class action mid-trial would be the start of a “brave new world” of no-case bids in representative proceedings, saying this was a rare instance of a case with “no chance of success”.
Engineering firm WorleyParsons has told the Federal Court it will press forward with a no case application in an attempt to shut down a shareholder class action against it.
WorleyParsons may seek to shut down a shareholder class action against it due to an “insuperable obstacle” caused by last minute pleading amendments, the engineering firm told a court at the outset of a 21-day hearing.