Entities linked to late solicitor Mark Elliott have offered a settlement to end the pursuit of damages for Banksia class action members, but the deal would leave a significant sum held on trust by the Elliott parties out of reach.
A firm created by solicitor Mark Elliott as a vehicle to launch shareholder class actions has been taken to court by Myer over an unpaid $1.4 million legal bill racked up in defending a class action that was thrown out as an abuse of process.
The son of the funder behind a class action at the centre of scandalous misconduct claims says he would have sought advice from a family friend if he had realised his father and counsel leading the case were misleading the court to inflate their profits from a $64 million settlement.
The funder accused of a fraudulent scheme to pocket inflated fees from the Banksia Securities class action produced less than 200 documents to the contradictor in the case and invented a story about a routine email purging practice to explain the discovery hole, a court has heard.
The son of Banksia Securities class action funder Mark Elliott questioned his father on whether it was “right” to rip up a $64 million settlement with the collapsed lender’s trustee if the deal didn’t guarantee him a $12.8 million commission, a court has heard.
Lawyer Alex Elliott has told a judge he didn’t know when he postdated cheques for members of the Banksia class action legal team that it was done to mislead the appeals court in the case, but has admitted that in hindsight “it doesn’t look good”.
Last-minute discovery of emails by the solicitor facing accusations of complicity in a fraudulent scheme by his father and the barristers leading a class action over the collapse of Banksia Securities has been labelled a “professional disgrace” that has twice delayed his trial.
A judge overseeing the misconduct trial in the Banksia Securities class action has rejected a bid by a lawyer for the deceased cost consultant in the case to separately determine whether a cause of action survives his death.
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.