It has been described as the darkest chapter in Victoria’s legal history, an exemplar of all that is terrible with class actions in Australia. A case of greedy lawyers who found their golden egg in a group of retirees who had lost their life savings, never thinking the chickens might come home to roost. Until now.
Allowing former senior barrister Norman O’Bryan to reopen his defence in the Banksia class action while “avoiding the witness box” was clearly prejudicial, and futile to boot, a judge has said in his reasons for refusing the silk’s last-minute application.
Once high-flying barrister Norman O’Bryan might seek to challenge a refusal by the judge overseeing the Banksia class action to revisit his abandoned defence and accept into evidence a document he claims proved he did not secretly hold shares in the funder behind the case.
The litigation funding company controlled by the late solicitor Mark Elliott has told a court of its “remorse and regret” for its misconduct in the Banksia Securities class action, a case that has been described as the “darkest chapter in Victoria’s legal history”.
The son of Banksia class action funder Mark Elliott was no Michael Corleone of the Godfather, and was not knowingly complicit in an alleged scheme masterminded by his father to defraud group members and destroy evidence, his lawyer has told a court.
Barrister Norman O’Bryan SC has failed in his last-ditch bid to reopen his defence in the Banksia class action to submit evidence he says shows he did not retain an interest in the litigation funder behind the case.
The judge overseeing the trial alleging fraud on the part of barristers and the funder behind a class action over Banksia Securities will be asked to award at least $32 million to the failed property lender’s 16,000 debenture holders for the serious misconduct alleged against the lawyers.
The son of the funder behind a class action at the centre of scandalous misconduct claims says he would have sought advice from a family friend if he had realised his father and counsel leading the case were misleading the court to inflate their profits from a $64 million settlement.
Solicitor Alex Elliott has said it never clicked with him that members of the legal team running the Banksia class action were misleading an appeals court when his father — the mastermind behind the alleged deception — told him to sign cheques for lawyers that they could not cash.
The funder accused of a fraudulent scheme to pocket inflated fees from the Banksia Securities class action produced less than 200 documents to the contradictor in the case and invented a story about a routine email purging practice to explain the discovery hole, a court has heard.