An appeals court has thrown out the Democratic Republic of East Timor’s second bid to stay a case brought against it by Lighthouse Corporation over $328 million in alleged losses stemming from a failed fuel supply contract.
There is a “reasonable chance” that two shareholder class actions against failed electronics retailer Dick Smith will settle by February of next year, group members have learned.
AMP’s group executive says she was never told of bullying claims made against her by former general counsel Larissa Cook until the lawyer filed a $2.7 million lawsuit alleging “hostile, aggressive and intimidating behaviour” in response to complaints she made about AMP’s fees for no service conduct.
Accounting giant Ernst & Young, which has been dragged into two class actions by Slater & Gordon shareholders, has shot back at claims it was negligent in its 2015 audit report of the law firm’s UK division, which included a review of the firm’s disastrous acquisition of Quindell’s professional services arm that found no impairment on the goodwill value of the deal.
The funders behind two shareholder class actions against online fashion retailer Surfstitch Group will seek a commission of up to 30 per cent while the law firms that brought the cases will ask for approval of up to $6 million in legal fees during an upcoming settlement approval hearing, which also puts the fate of a deed of company arrangement that saved the company from liquidation on the line.
Accounting giant Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu will not face cross claims over the collapse of failed retailer Dick Smith when a hearing of three shareholder class actions kicks off in three months.
Shareholders have appealed a ruling that found a “serious problem” with market-based causation and dismissed three cases against the liquidator of failed global financial services firm Babcock & Brown.
A Sydney-based development firm has won limited access to legal documents from Norton Rose Fulbright in a property dispute over redevelopment of the Sydney Fish Markets and a $2.3 million “secret commission”.
Sydney-based liquidator David Iannuzzi has been disqualified from serving as an insolvency practitioner for 10 years, in the first case brought by the Australian Tax Office under the Corporations Act’s ban on tax avoidance schemes.
The former AMP general counsel who alleges she was bullied and sacked for complaining about the wealth manager’s fees for no service was not a whistleblower, but just one of many employees who raised concerns about the practice, the firm has said in a defence to the fired lawyer’s $2.7 million lawsuit.