Fundraising company Appco Group Australia has failed in its bid to put a massive sham contracting class action in the Federal Court on hold while it fights a ruling that let the case continue as a representative proceeding.
The corporate watchdog has won special leave to appeal to the High Court a ruling that found a general store owner in outback South Australia who sold cars by “book up” had not acted unconscionably.
The Full Federal Court will hear arguments next week in an appeal by the ACCC over an alleged laundry detergent cartel, the first so-called hub and spoke case brought by the competition regulator.
The publisher of The Daily Telegraph has won its bid to bring a defence of justification against claims by actor Geoffrey Rush that the newspaper defamed him in articles alleging the actor behaved “inappropriately” during a production of King Lear at the Sydney Theatre Company.
The lead applicant in an investor class action against Fitch Ratings will get its hands on internal reports detailing why the agency assigned a Triple A rating to Sigma Finance Corporation ahead of its 2008 collapse, and whether it could have predicted the fall of the $27 billion investment fund.
Fundraising company Appco told a judge Friday that it faced an ‘injustice’ if a wage case were allowed to proceed as a class action on behalf of over 1,000 workers, but the judge was not impressed, saying the argument made ‘no sense’ to him.
Fundraising company Appco Australia challenged the similarities between group members in a class action alleging it misclassified workers as independent contractors to avoid paying minimum wage and benefits, even after a judge shot down its bid to block the case from proceeding as a class action.
The firm running the class action against Fitch Ratings over SCDO products has been given the go ahead to add claims of fraud and deceit after lawyers allegedly unearthed a hidden mathematical table the agency used in assigning ratings to the toxic financial products.
Facing cross-examination over the law firm’s bid to add fraud and deceit claims to a class action against Fitch Ratings, a Squire Patton Boggs lawyer exchanged fire with a barrister for the ratings agency, saying Fitch was having a regular “whinge” about discovery and “no” she would not take the comment back.