A judge has shot down an attempt by cruise giant Royal Caribbean to block victims of the White Island volcano eruption in New Zealand from suing for damages in a US court.
Payouts in class actions in 2020 largely kept pace with the previous year despite the financial strain of the COVID-19 pandemic, with companies and other defendants paying more than $696 million to settle class actions last year.
The law firm that led an unfunded class action against the Federal government over the controversial Robodebt scheme will ask the court to approve up to $16 million in legal costs when it seeks approval for the $112 million settlement reached in the class action last year.
The applicant in the settled Robodebt class action has warned a judge he will have a “dispute on [his] hands” if the government presses an argument that law firm Gordon Legal is not entitled to some of its legal fees — an argument the court was told would put the Commonwealth in breach of the settlement deed.
The parties in a class action against the Federal Government over the controversial Robodebt scheme have reached an in principle settlement as the first day of a highly anticipated hearing was scheduled to kick off.
The son of Banksia class action funder Mark Elliott, who has been accused of complicity in a fraudulent scheme to maximise the profits of the lawyers in the case, was young and inexperienced and didn’t know his father’s conduct was wrong, his barrister has told a court.
A routine practice by the funder behind the scandal-ridden Banksia class action of deleting emails, documented in a letter by his solicitors just days before his death, isn’t consistent with the electronic record maintained in another class action in which he was involved, a court overseeing a trial in the case has heard.
A judge has refused an application by the Federal Government to appeal the expansion of the Robodebt class action pleadings despite finding the case was “troubling”, “weak” and in certain aspects “[made] no sense whatsoever”.
Lawyer Alex Elliott was complicit in a plan by his late father to mislead the court and group members in the Banksia class action, to conceal conflicts of interest and to profit from the case at the expense of debenture holders, a judge has been told.
A judge has slammed the parties in the Robodebt class action for sparring over the pleadings, one week after the class was given leave to add a claim for exemplary damages and allege knowledge of the program’s unlawfulness on the part of several government officials and federal minister Alan Tudge.