Private construction company Hutchinson Builders has brought legal action against the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, seeking to quash what it says is an invalid notice to produce documents to the regulator, which has vowed to bring cases against the construction industry this year.
A judge has put a proposal for a common fund order in a class action against sandalwood producer Quintis on hold as the court awaits judgment in an historic challenge to the power of courts to make common fund orders.
The law firm running a class action against sandalwood producer Quintis has pitched an unusual common fund order that subjects the firm and the funder bankrolling the case to ongoing monitoring by a cost referee.
From a record-setting funder’s cut to the first call for ‘“proportionality”, last year saw a number of groundbreaking judgments approving class action settlements worth more than half a billion dollars. Here are the 10 biggest settlements of 2018, and the law firms and funders that negotiated them.
A judge has allowed an assessment of Gadens’ legal costs in a dispute with a client over $665,000 in fees, saying while the application had been filed out of time, the law firm seemed to have done “little by way of compliance” with its costs disclosure obligations.
A barrister for two units of embattled wealth manager IOOF and three senior company executives facing claims by APRA have criticised the regulator for filing a broad concise statement and no statement of claim after a three-year investigation.
A shareholder class action led by Bannister Law against sandalwood oil producer Quintis will be absorbed by rival law firm Gadens in a consolidation agreement that ends a battle over the competing cases.
Accounting giant Ernst & Young, which is accused in a class action of misleading and deceptive conduct in signing off on the 2015 and 2016 financial reports of sandalwood producer Quintis, has named the company’s previous auditor as partly to blame in any finding of liability.
A judge has rejected a bid by the applicants in two shareholder class actions against online fashion retailer Surfstitch to push forward with a proposed settlement of the cases without an opt-out notice to group members.
Lawyers leading a class action against Quintis want the failed sandalwood oil producer to hand over evidence of any insurance policy that could cover the company and its founder for damages sought in the case.