Two insurance brokers have dodged being dragged into class action proceedings against sandalwood producer Quintis to boost a settlement reached last year, as a fight over insurance owed to the company to cover the settlement continues.
Further attempts to settle a securities class action against last mile logistics software firm GetSwift would be like flogging a dead horse, a judge has heard as the matter works its way towards a final hearing.
Commonwealth Bank of Australia could be on the hook for a large penalty after the court found the bank engaged in misleading and deceptive conduct and violated its financial services obligations on more than 12,000 occasions by overcharging customers more than $2.2 million in interest.
GetSwift has been criticised for its “quite unfair attack” on a Federal Court judge who refused to disqualify himself from hearing a shareholder class action against the logistics software company after presiding over ASIC’s civil penalty proceeding against the company.
A judge has raised the possibility of referring a class action against the Morrison government for allegedly contaminating Indigenous land with toxic firefighting foam to the Full Federal Court due to novel questions the case raises about whether damages can be recovered for cultural loss.
Proceedings launched by ASIC in December accusing the Commonwealth Bank of Australia of saddling consumers with $2.9 million in inflated interest rates on their business overdraft accounts on more than 12,000 occasions will move swiftly to a penalties hearing.
A barrister for a Sydney criminal lawyer who wears hearing aids and is suing News Corp’s Nationwide News over allegedly defamatory Daily Telegraph articles referring to his profound deafness has likened the stories to accusing bespectacled lawyers of being blind.
Nine-owned Fairfax will have to pay out over $2 million in legal fees after being hit with indemnity costs on top of a $280,000 judgment in its defamation spat with venture capitalist Dr Elaine Stead for its “Micawber-like” approach to the case.
Venture capitalist Dr Elaine Stead is seeking indemnity costs after being awarded $280,000 in her defamation case against Nine-owned Fairfax, which she accuses of rejecting several settlement offers with “bugger off letters” and engaging in a “petulant campaign” of media coverage post-judgment.
A group of women harmed by pelvic mesh devices produced by Johnson & Johnson have accused it of persisting with a “wreckage” of a case in which one of its own doctors admitted the pharmaceutical company knew of the risks posed by the implants at they time they were sold worldwide.