Justice David O’Callaghan

A judge has blessed a law firm’s $16.6 million legal bill for running two franchisee class actions against 7-Eleven despite a contradictor’s argument that it had a “troubling” practice of deferring its fees to benefit the funder that bankrolled the cases. 

Courts stepped up their scrutiny of class action settlements in 2022, with judges grappling with difficult issues such as funding commissions in employment cases and whether settlements, even those worth hundreds of millions of dollars, were fair to group members.

A judge has thrown out an underpayments class action against NSW not-for-profit Life Without Borders for failure to advance the case with due diligence and slapped the lead applicant with costs for his “unreasonable” acts during the course of the proceeding.

Liberty Financial unit Minerva has challenged a judgment that found two schemes it carried out were done with the primary purpose of securing a tax advantage.

A judge has hit ANZ with a $25 million penalty in a case by the corporate regulator that alleged the bank short-changed hundreds of thousands of customers to the tune of $200 million.

Airservices Australia has succeeded in overturning a “manifestly unreasonable” $72,450 fine, but otherwise failed in its appeal of a decision which found it breached an enterprise agreement by withdrawing guidelines for standby shifts for air traffic controllers.

Investors in Mayfair Group’s collapsed IPO Wealth Fund have clawed back only a fraction of their alleged $67 million losses after a judge approved a settlement in a class action alleging the fund’s trustee misled unit holders.

Investors in Mayfair Group’s collapsed IPO Wealth Fund are set to recoup only a fraction of their alleged $67 million losses in a best-case settlement of a class action alleging the fund’s trustee misled unit holders.

A judge has ordered that part of a decision by the Australian Taxation Office over three alleged schemes by Liberty Financial to obtain tax benefits be set aside, rejecting arguments that the corporate group’s operations were “artificial or contrived”.

Coal mining firm TerraCom has lost its Full Court bid to shield a PricewaterhouseCoopers report from ASIC, on appeal from a judgment which found the regulator could view the report because of public statements made by the company.