Lawyerly’s Litigation Firms of 2020 delivered significant victories for clients last year in bet-the-company matters, thriving in a tumultuous year that saw courts and litigants adapt to virtual trials and other new norms that are sure to outlast the COVID-19 pandemic.
Trial is set to begin February 2 in a $100 million shareholder class action against Woolworths over a February 2015 profit downgrade that allegedly led to a drop in the company’s share price.
A judge has signalled his intention to sign off on a $138 million settlement in a class action against IAG and approve a common fund order that gives the litigation funder a $34.5 million commission, but an application by the funder for reimbursement of after-the-event insurance has been refused.
Convenience store chain 7-Eleven has asked the High Court to find courts do not have the power to make common fund orders at settlement or judgment in a class action, one year after the High Court ruled common fund orders could not be made in the early part of a representative proceeding.
A bid by the applicant to restrict a securities class action against recycling company Sims Metal Management to shareholders who have registered to join the case has been shot down by a judge, who said the application was not in the interests of justice but “in the interests of injustice”.
Shareholders who lost a Federal Court trial in their class action against engineering company Worley are challenging the decision to dismiss the case.
Murray Goulburn’s former managing director Gary Helou and chief financial officer Brad Hingle have been disqualified from heading up companies after they were found to have breached the Corporations Act for their role in the milk supplier’s repeated failure to disclose an expected material decrease in the milk supplier’s earnings guidance for 2016.
Two class actions on behalf of 7-Eleven franchisees plan to expand their case against the convenience store chain by adding new allegations of systemic unconscionable conduct.
The corporate regulator is pushing for a three-year director ban against former Murray Goulburn managing director Gary Helou and a two-year disqualification order against the dairy cooperative’s former chief financial officer over misleading representations about farmgate milk prices five years ago.
The Full Court Federal Court has declined to answer a question posed by 7-Eleven as to whether common fund orders can be made on settlement or judgment in a class action, saying the issue should be dealt with on facts, not assumptions. In a judgment handed down on Tuesday, the Full Court dismissed 7-Eleven’s bid…