The judge overseeing a consumer class action against wealth manager Colonial First State Investments has given the green light to a $100 million settlement, but questioned a $23.1 million cut to funder Augusta under a “strange” funding agreement.
Hearing arguments Tuesday on whether lawyers should be permitted to earn contingency fees in Federal Court class actions, judges on a Full Court bench appeared to lean in favour of allowing so-called solicitors’ common fund orders, rejecting claims they are “unjust”.
Optus has lost its appeal of a decision that found the telco could not claim legal professional privilege over a Deloitte report into a major data breach, with an appeals court highlighting the lack of evidence from former CEO Kelly Bayer Rosmarin.
While it was unfair for a judge to pick Gilbert + Tobin to run a class action against Jaguar Land Rover on the condition that it lower its funding rate, the judge was entitled to consider the law firm’s experience in a similar case against Toyota, an appeals court has said in its reasons.
A decision awarding carriage to Gilbert + Tobin in a class action against Jaguar Land Rover on the condition that it lower its funding rate lacked procedural fairness, the Full Court has found, prompting the firm to team up with its competitor to run the case.
A judge has given the green light to amendments to a $100 million class action against NAB over the collapse of Walton Construction, which include new claims of equitable fraud and knowing involvement in misleading and deceptive conduct.
A judge that tossed two shareholder class actions against the Commonwealth Bank of Australia has found the bank did not have to alert investors to the possibility of AUSTRAC proceedings, saying investors did not expect to be apprised of the “toings and froings” of regulatory investigations.
The High Court has been asked to overturn a NSW Court of Appeal decision finding it had no power to exclude unregistered group members from a settlement, which conflicted with Federal Court precedent, hearing the divergence of the important issue “can only be resolved by the High Court”.
Optus has denied that it ‘cloaked’ the true dominant purpose of a Deloitte report into a major data breach in 2022, arguing on appeal that the report was privileged and that a class action should not have access to it.
Two class actions have failed to convince a judge that the Commonwealth Bank of Australia’s money laundering compliance failure which led to a $700 million penalty was “law breaking on a grand scale” that should have been disclosed to the market, the latest shareholder case to flop after being taken to trial.