Settlement

Tens of thousands of junior doctors who allege they were systemically underpaid have reached a $230 million settlement with NSW Health, the largest settlement ever in an underpayments class action.

Former AMA Group CEO Andrew Hopkins has agreed to pay the car repair giant a confidential sum to settle claims he defrauded the company of $3 million and breached his fiduciary duties.

A judge has signed off on a $16 million settlement in a class action against Dixon Advisory, but the funder of a competing case that was stayed after losing a beauty parade has earned a fragment of the $1 million it sought from the resolution sum.

A group of surgeons who worked for The Cosmetic Institute are set to pay $25 million to settle a class action brought on behalf of 13,500 patients who claim they were injured by botched breast augmentation surgery.

A class action seeking to hold a regional NSW law firm liable for the actions of a former employee who was sentenced to a term of imprisonment for fraud offences in 2021 has reached a settlement. 

A bid by the law firm behind a settled class action against Hays Recruitment to increase a cap on costs to settle a spat with a litigation funder has been dashed, with a judge pulling up the firm for failing to inform the court of the funder’s claim.

A funder that bankrolled a class action that was stayed against Dixon Advisory has argued it should receive $969,000 from a $16 million settlement reached in the competing proceedings that went ahead, saying its costs were spent to protect group members’ interests.

A judge has approved a settlement in a shareholder class action against livestock exporter Wellard that grants a 34 per cent cut for group members, saying that investors had agreed to the lawyers and funder receiving the “lion’s share”. 

When the Supreme Court of Victoria considers for the first time a settlement reached in a class action run on a contingency fee basis, it will grapple with some novel questions, including whether to trim the 27.5 per cent group costs order granted to Slater & Gordon at the outset of the case, legal experts say.

Australia’s largest childcare centre operator G8 Education has agreed to pay $46.5 million to settle a shareholder class action alleging the company failed to keep investors in the loop about factors affecting its 2017 financial performance, and the firm that ran the case is set to make $13 million after securing the first group costs order in Victoria.