Wealth management firm Colonial First State has lost its bid to shield emails with internal counsel about investment options for its FirstChoice super fund after a judge found a class action applicant had joint legal professional privilege.
On the first day of trial in parallel class actions and regulatory proceedings, the Fair Work Ombudsman panned the payment systems adopted by Woolworths and Coles for salaried managers, saying they were “entirely foreign” to the industrial award and that the supermarket giants had “no meaningful proper records” for overtime.
Westpac, Macquarie and ANZ are seeking class closure orders ahead of mediation in three class actions over flexible commissions schemes, telling a court hearing they will be “completely at sea” without a better idea of the class size.
Payments processing company EML has hit back at a shareholder class action over its alleged failure to disclose Ireland central bank’s concerns about its anti-money laundering and counter terrorism financing compliance, claiming swathes of the case are liable to be struck out.
Real estate investment trust NorthWest can amend its pleadings in a lawsuit alleging one of the country’s largest unlisted healthcare property funds conspired to prevent it from acquiring a controlling stake, but has come up short in its bid to add to its claims against property giant Dexus.
A sacked Greenwoods & Herbert Smith Freehills partner seeking $13 million in compensation from his former firm and Lendlease has been criticised for claiming that whistleblower protections introduced in 2019 “wouldn’t make sense” if they did not apply retroactively.
A judge has ordered two AMP units to pay a total of $24 million after finding the wealth manager acted unconscionably in charging insurance premiums and advice fees to deceased customers.
ANZ will no longer contest liability at trial in a case by the regulator over more than $10 million in cash advance fees charged to the credit card accounts of hundreds of thousands of customers.
Customers of wealth manager Colonial First State were $10 million to $12 million better off without a litigation funder in a class action over the slow transfer of accounts to low cost MySuper funds, a judge has found.
A fed-up judge has vented his frustration with the problem of competing class actions in a move that appears to punish the second filed case against Medibank. But is he right that the courts are increasingly being asked to deal with duplicative proceedings? And was his order really all that drastic?