Two Australian companies have won their application for special leave to the High Court as they continue their fight to shut down a wrongful death case in the US brought by the families of 15 people killed in an aircraft crash near Lockhart River in northern Queensland in May 2005.
The barrister leading an appeal seeking to revive Quinn Emanuel’s fees for no service class action against AMP has criticised the approach taken in the landmark GetSwift ruling on competing class actions, saying it placed the court in the role of auctioneer and actually encouraged duplicative proceedings.
Pitcher Partners has lost it challenge to a ruling socking it with a $5.6 million bill for an accounting error concealed from client Neville’s Bus Service, with an appeals court saying there was a “clear and principled basis” to require the accounting firm to pay the sum awarded for loss and damage to the transport company.
Indonesian national airline Garuda has been slapped with a $19 million penalty in the ACCC’s decade-long global cartel case over air cargo price-fixing, bringing the total penalties won by the competition regulator over the cartel to $132.5 million.
Common fund orders are the completion of the notion of class actions envisaged when the regime was introduced 27 years ago, a joint-sitting of two appeals courts was told on the second and last day of a landmark challenge to what has become an oft-used case management tool by trial judges.
An appeal before a historic joint sitting of two courts over so-called common fund orders in class actions kicked off Monday with a full bench of six judges and a packed courtroom hearing arguments by eminent barristers for BMW and Westpac that the orders are either preemptive or pointless.
The Australian Securities & Investments Commission has largely prevailed on appeal to the High Court in its case against former directors of collapsed retirement village owner Prime Trust, including former federal health minister Michael Wooldridge.
The Federal Court has thrown out a proposed $35 million settlement between ASIC and Westpac over responsible lending breaches, saying the agreement was “unworkable” and left the court in an “information vacuum”.
Former Solicitor-General Justin Gleeson, SC, told a Federal Court judge Wednesday to reject a proposed $35 million deal between ASIC and Westpac, saying the bank should pay at least $100 million if it committed the responsible lending breaches alleged by the regulator.