Judges

The funder behind a class action against Westpac over allegedly excessive insurance premiums has confirmed that it will continue backing the case despite earlier concerns it may pull out in the wake of the High Court's landmark ruling on common fund orders.

AMP will face a class action alleging its financial representatives pushed AMP inflated insurance policies onto 100,000 customers despite knowing that better policies could be found through other providers.

Volkswagen has appealed a record $125 million penalty handed down over its emissions cheating scandal by a judge who criticised a $75 million settlement agreement with the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission as "manifestly inadequate".

A Canadian trader is appealing a ruling that threw out his $10 million defamation case against the Australian Securities and Investments Commission over allegedly defamatory communications the regulator sent to major stockbrokers.

Engineering services company CIMIC will fork over $32.4 million to settle a shareholder class action, with group members expected to get 40 per cent of the settlement total if the court approves the requested  legal costs and funder's commission.

With Victoria set to pass legislation permitting law firms to charge contingency fees, experts have raised fears of an exodus of class actions from other states and the federal system. But the Federal Court, which hears about two-thirds of Australia's representative proceedings, is not likely to surrender easily.

The lead applicant in a shareholder class action against laser technology company Arasor will walk away with a fraction of the approximately $508,000 in legal and other bills it has racked up in disputes with the ATO and funder International Litigation Partners following the approval of a $19.25 million class action settlement more than two years ago.

The High Court's recent ruling putting a stop to the practice of judges issuing common fund orders at the early stages of class action proceedings, while "not a good development", wasn't the end of the class action regime as we know it, a Federal Court judge has said.

A landmark ruling granting fintech Rokt's application for a software patent has come under attack before the Full Federal Court, with the judges expressing skepticism about the invention's patentability.

An Adelaide lawyer has been awarded $750,000 in damages after suing a woman who gave him bad reviews on Google that sent 80 per cent of his clients packing.