A Forum Finance director is unable to file a defence against Westpac’s $400 million fraud case because his former solicitor has refused to hand over case files to his new lawyers until he pays a “remarkable” $300,000 legal bill, a court has heard.
Investors have won a bid to freeze the assets of cryptocurrency exchange platform operator Blockchain Global after it allegedly stole $10.3 million from ninety-four traders.
Investment firm Keybridge Capital has brought action in court seeking to set aside a statutory demand for $165,000 issued by its former law firm and calling for an assessment of over $600,000 in legal bills.
A judge has questioned whether he should allow prosecutors to amend charges against ANZ and its treasurer in a criminal cartel case over a $2.5 billion share placement after the bank argued the charges were defective and should be quashed.
A ruling this week that rejected the first application for a group costs order in a class action because the applicants were better off with their existing no win, no fee arrangement was the right decision given the limits of the legislation, experts say.
The Commonwealth Bank will plead guilty to criminal charges following an ASIC investigation over misleading representations to customers who purchased add-on consumer credit insurance.
The former lead auditor of stockbroker Halifax Investment Services, whose 2018 collapse resulted in $200 million in investor losses, has had his registration cancelled following an application by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission.
Members Equity Bank faces a potential multi-million dollar fine if it is found guilty of misleading home loan customers in the first criminal prosecution under the consumer protection provision of the ASIC Act to be tried in the Federal Court.
Saying the interests of class action members “must be given primacy”, a judge has rejected the first bid for a group costs order in a class action since contingency fee legislation passed in Victoria.
Chinese lender Aoyin must pay PricewaterhouseCoopers’ legal costs for a vacated trial after Aoyin’s eleventh hour decision to join Baker McKenzie to a $10 million cross-claim in a dispute concerning the accounting firm’s advice on its failed bid to launch the first Chinese incorporated bank in Australia.