A group costs order giving class action solicitors a percentage cut of the proceeds of a case is a factor in weighing whether proceedings should be transferred from Victoria to a state in which such an order could not operate, the High Court has ruled.
Are group costs orders a factor in deciding a bid to transfer a class action? Can the orders survive the move to an inhospitable state? These questions are to be decided by the High Court Wednesday, in a ruling that will clarify the relevance and reach of Victoria’s contingency fee regime.
In submissions to the High Court, the applicant in a class action brought on behalf of Arrium shareholders against KMPG has attacked the Attorney-General’s argument that a contingency fee order is a neutral factor in assessing the accounting firm’s bid to move the case from Victoria.
Counsel for Worley in a nine-year-old shareholder class action that is set for another Full Court appeal has foreshadowed a possible recusal application against the judges who heard the first appeal.
The NSW Supreme Court would have the power to deal with a contingency fee order made in a class action against KPMG if the accounting firm won its application to move the case from Victoria, making the existence of the order a neutral factor in the transfer bid, the federal Attorney-General has told the High Court.
Supporting KPMG’s bid to move a class action over the collapse of Arrium from Melboure to Sydney, former directors of the failed steel company have told the High Court the Victoria Supreme Court was impermissibly preferring the policy of its state in finding a contingency fee order made in the case could be factored into a transfer application.
The Full High Court will sit for the hearing of KPMG’s battle to transfer a Victoria class action to Sydney, as the applicant in the case raises a question as to the constitutional validity of the firm’s argument that the NSW Supreme Court is bound to keep a group costs order operative.
KPMG has won its application for the High Court to weigh in on the relevance of a contingency fee order in determining a bid to transfer a shareholder class action from Victoria to NSW.
Accounting firm KPMG has asked the High Court for a second time to weigh in on the relevance of a contingency fee order made in a Victoria Supreme Court class action to its bid to transfer the case to NSW.
KPMG has lost the latest round in its fight to transfer a class action over the collapse of steel giant Arrium from Victoria to NSW, with an appeals court finding that a group costs order made in the case could not travel across the border.