The son of Banksia class action funder Mark Elliott, who has been accused of complicity in a fraudulent scheme to maximise the profits of the lawyers in the case, was young and inexperienced and didn’t know his father’s conduct was wrong, his barrister has told a court.
Viagogo has appealed a $7 million penalty handed down after a judge found the ticket reseller had misled consumers into thinking it was an official vendor and failed to disclose booking fees of around 28 per cent.
A routine practice by the funder behind the scandal-ridden Banksia class action of deleting emails, documented in a letter by his solicitors just days before his death, isn’t consistent with the electronic record maintained in another class action in which he was involved, a court overseeing a trial in the case has heard.
A judge has expressed skepticism at claims by accounting firm Pitcher Partners that the lead applicant of a now dropped class action over its auditing advice to Slater & Gordon should be hit with indemnity costs for discontinuing the case.
The ACCC has lodged an appeal after a judge threw out its case against Employsure alleging the specialist workplace relations consultancy duped small businesses into signing long-term contracts via several Google ads that promised free workplace advice which appeared to be government-affiliated.
Johnson Winter & Slattery persisted with a shareholder class action over auditing advice given to Slater & Gordon despite concerns about the strength of the claims raised in late 2017, Pitcher Partners has told the Federal Court as it seeks indemnity costs for the now abandoned proceeding.
The maker of pain killer Maxigesic is taking its long-running battle with Nuromol manufacturer Reckitt Benckiser to an appeals court after a recent ruling that its advertising misled consumers by claiming Maxigesic provided better, faster and more effective pain relief than paracetamol or ibuprofen.
Lawyer Alex Elliott can’t refuse to hand over evidence in the Banksia class action on the grounds of privilege against self incrimination or exposure to penalty because he waived privilege when he produced the documents to lawyers for his late father’s funder, a court has been told.
Pharmaceutical rivals Merck Sharp & Dohme and Pfizer have both suffered a blow in their efforts to patent a better pneumococcal vaccine, with a judge upholding both infringement and invalidity claims in the long-running case over the blockbuster Prevnar 13 vaccine.
A media report about Google’s location data privacy disclosures that set off investigations by consumer regulators in Australia and the US triggered crisis talks by senior executives of the search engine giant referred to as the ‘Oh shit meeting’, a court has been told.