From a record-setting funder’s cut to the first call for ‘“proportionality”, last year saw a number of groundbreaking judgments approving class action settlements worth more than half a billion dollars. Here are the 10 biggest settlements of 2018, and the law firms and funders that negotiated them.
Online payment giant PayPal has successfully opposed trade mark registration sought by Australian financial planning software company FinPal, with IP Australia finding the -pal suffix to be a “striking similarity” between the two marks.
An independent expert panel who will determine a ‘Best in Show’ shortlist of super funds would take over from unions and employers in controlling Australia’s default superannuation system as part of a major overhaul of the $2.7 trillion industry recommended Thursday.
The former CEO of Radio Rentals, James Marshall, has been dragged into a consumer class action alleging he knew the home goods rental company pushed misleading leases onto vulnerable consumers.
The corporate watchdog has released proposed reforms to fees and costs disclosure requirements for superannuation and managed investment schemes, and the rules would require disclosures that “simplify” how information is presented to consumers.
JP Morgan, the reported whistleblower behind a criminal cartel case against ANZ, Deutsche Bank and Citigroup over a $2.5 billion share placement, has won its bid to keep documents from a related ASIC probe confidential.
A judge has allowed an assessment of Gadens’ legal costs in a dispute with a client over $665,000 in fees, saying while the application had been filed out of time, the law firm seemed to have done “little by way of compliance” with its costs disclosure obligations.
Defunct financial adviser Dover Financial is seeking evidence to bolster its argument that no clients were harmed by a liability waiver that’s at the centre of a lawsuit by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission.
The investor behind a failed class action against the Public Trustee of Queensland over the collapse of Octaviar Group has escaped a bid by the Trustee for maximum costs, with a judge ruling the case was not a “nakedly speculative venture” by the funder.
Accounting firm Pitcher Partners has been ordered to pay more than $5.6 million in damages for fraudulently concealing an amortisation error that caused a well-known bus operator to face higher than expected costs in a NSW transport tender.