Measures to relax insolvency and bankruptcy laws to stem a possible wave of COVID-19 company collapses will not achieve their goal — and if Australia enters a European-style lockdown it won’t be a wave of insolvencies, it will be a tsunami, Lawyerly has been told.
Six law firms are working on a consolidated trial of multiple class actions over the collapse of retailer Dick Smith, but when the trial opened in the NSW Supreme Court this week, a lone barrister appeared in court before Justice Michael Ball, amid a sea of empty bar tables. Most of the hearing’s participants joined through a virtual courtroom while members of the public were invited to watch the trial unfold on a YouTube live stream. Welcome to litigating in the age of the coronavirus.
The corporate cop has brought legal proceedings against the Commonwealth Bank’s wealth management unit claiming it made misleading or deceptive statements to over 12,000 fund members during the transition to MySuper accounts.
Two law firms have mandated that staff begin working from home to limit the spread of the new coronavirus, while others begin shifting their workforce offsite as firms test their ability to weather what is expected to be a prolonged public health crisis.
Westpac has been hit with another class action over alleged anti-money laundering breaches, teeing up a high-stakes beauty parade over which firm will lead the class action against the bank.
A court has tossed a case by the ACCC against Ramsay Health Care claiming that the global hospital group misused its market power by pressuring a group of doctors who planned to open their own day clinic.
A court has ordered the lead applicant in a $129 million underpayment class action against Merivale to fill gaps in his case, after the hospitality giant complained there was insufficient information as to how the employee’s claims related to other workers.
With the common fund order tossed in a class action against two IAG entities over allegedly worthless add-on insurance, a Federal Court judge on Tuesday was asked to grapple with a practice note in determining when to notify group members of a possible order to “equitably and fairly” distribute the legal costs and funding commission in the proceedings.
The City of Melbourne has rejected a claim for damages for allegedly infringing a patented parking detection system created by tech firm Vehicle Monitoring Systems, saying it was not aware of the existence of two patents underlying the invention.
A judge overseeing a shareholder class action against collapsed engineering group RCR Tomlinson has said goodbye to the common fund order in the case while welcoming last year’s High Court decision preventing these orders from being made at the early stage in class actions.