A class action against franchise giant Retail Food Group wants to head off any challenge to its funding agreement with a court order that the financing arrangement is exempt from controversial regulations requiring group proceedings to be run as managed investment schemes.
If evidence were needed that courts are not rubber stamping class action settlements, the scrutiny of multi-million dollar agreements in 2021 is proof positive that judicial oversight of representative proceedings is robust.
A judge has rejected an “audacious” attempt by McMillan Shakespeare to recoup a surplus of funds left over after a $9.5 million class action settlement was distributed to registered group members.
A litigation funder has taken aim at a landmark judgment in an appeal of a ruling that found its funding arrangement with group members in a class action against Queensland energy suppliers was a managed investment scheme.
Mercedes-Benz has responded to a $650 million lawsuit by Australian dealers over its decision to move to a fixed-price agency model, saying it had a “legitimate commercial interest” in making the change and denying that dealer agreements were “perpetual” in their terms.
Indian generics giant Dr Reddy’s Laboratories must give Bristol-Myers Squib unit Celgene Corporation three months’ notice before deciding to sell generic versions of blockbuster cancer drug Revlimid in Australia.
Law firm Arnold Bloch Leibler will part with $28 million in its settlement with Slater & Gordon shareholders over advice ahead of the plaintiffs firm’s disastrous $1.2 billion Quindell acquisition.
The lawyers and funder behind a shareholder class action against Crown Resorts will be asking the court to approve fees and commission worth 35 per cent of a $125 million settlement with the gaming giant, leaving over $81 million for group members.
A judge has directed that the legal fees and funding commission sought to be deducted from a $125 million class action settlement with Crown Resorts be included in a proposed notice to shareholders, after learning that group members were forced to click through to Maurice Blackburn’s website to find the “critical” figures.
A judge has thrown out a lawsuit that argued the funding for a class action against two Queensland energy generators didn’t comply with new regulations targeting litigation funders, and said a landmark judgment that held class action funding agreements were managed investment schemes was conceptually incoherent and ripe for a Full Court challenge.