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.
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.
A judge has ruled that disaster payments cannot be taken into consideration in assessing damages in a long-running class action over the 2011 Queensland floods that destroyed 2,000 homes and claimed 12 lives.
Logistics services provider Qube has resolved a lawsuit that accused the Port of Newcastle of misusing its power in the market for port services by denying Qube’s request to use its own equipment to provide dry bulk unloading services at the port.
Rideshare giant Uber Technologies has lost a bid to keep its in-house legal team from handing over emails to a class action brought by Australian taxi drivers as well as the company behind the GoCatch taxi app.
Embattled dam operators Seqwater and Sunwater, along with the State of Queensland, have been hit with costs in a class action over the 2011 floods that destroyed 2,000 homes and claimed 12 lives.
A media report about Google’s location data privacy disclosures that set off investigations by consumer regulators in Australia and the US triggered crisis talks by senior executives of the search engine giant referred to as the ‘Oh shit meeting’, a court has been told.
Google has rejected claims by the ACCC that it tricked consumers into agreeing to expanded collection of their personal data, saying that it instead sought “explicit consent” from users through an “easy-to-understand opt-in consent mechanism”.
A judge has approved a $7 million settlement in a class action against the directors of pharmaceutical company QRxPharma, only a third of which will go to group members, saying proportionality was not a basis for rejecting fees that were otherwise fair and reasonable.
The funder backing a shareholder class action against the directors of pharmaceutical firm QRxPharma will not seek to profit from a $7 million settlement in order to bring about a better return for group members, a judge has been told.