A man charged with contempt of court for failing to hand over infringing products in a trade mark case won by electrical goods manufacturer Clipsal Australia gets six more months to pay his outstanding fine, or he goes to jail.
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.
A challenge to the legality of common fund orders, an appeal to the High Court over the power of judges to stay competing cases, one of the first judgments in a shareholder class action and reform proposals promise to make 2019 another action-packed year in class actions. Here, experts give their predictions for the class action landscape this year.
Adero Law has filed class actions against labour hire companies Hays and Stellar Personnel on behalf of casual miners who allege they were entitled to accrued leave, on the eve of what’s expected to be a banner year for employment class actions in Australia.
The applicant in a class action against Ford over allegedly defective PowerShift transmissions has taken another stab at bringing an unconscionable conduct claim, after the judge overseeing the case panned an earlier pleading as “problematic”.
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.
Majority shareholders in MWL Financial have won court approval to bring a derivative suit against US-based Focus Financial Partners over an acquisition gone sour.
Last year was an exciting one for class action lawyers, with monumental court decisions on competing cases, cross-jurisdictional spats, proportionality in settlements and the power of judges to decide how a recovery is distributed. Here, top class action litigators tell us what the most significant rulings of 2018 were and why the decisions will continue to matter this year.
In a situation a judge has called “extraordinary and troubling”, Deloitte’s files on failed construction company Hastie — sought as evidence by shareholders in a class action — have vanished from the accounting giant’s locked ‘litigation room’ and are now in the control of a single partner who refuses to return them.
A multi-million dollar settlement has been reached in a shareholder class action against private training company Ashley Services over its $67 million tumble two years ago.