Maurice Blackburn’s funding model rejected by a judge overseeing a beauty parade of class actions against BHP appeared structured to incentivise the firm to push up its legal fees, an appeals court said Monday on the first day of a high stakes hearing challenging a decision to shut down two of three competing cases against the mining giant.
A judge has raised questions about a redacted funding agreement in a class action against two IAG units over allegedly worthless add-on insurance products, saying the details were needed for a swift resolution of the case.
The Federal Court has approved a scheme of arrangement which will see investors take a 70 per cent stake in troubled fund manager Angas Securities, receiving a possible $52.2 million in shares and other assets.
Melbourne-based civic compliance firm SARB Management Group wants to put the brakes on a case brought by tech company Vehicle Monitoring Systems over a patented method for detecting vehicles, in a dispute it says was finalised in a settlement reached almost five years ago.
Oil exploration company Paltar Petroleum will be wound up after a judge rejected a proposed deed of company arrangement as containing “too much uncertainty”.
A judge has dismissed an application by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission to investigate two Sydney-based liquidators, saying the regulator had failed to prove its suspicions about the pair.
The Quintis shareholder class action trial could be delayed for almost two years, while ASIC runs its civil proceedings case against the founder of the sandalwood oil production company.
The Democratic Republic of East Timor has lost its bid to dismiss a lawsuit brought by oil and gas firm Lighthouse Corporation over $328 million in alleged losses stemming from a failed fuel supply agreement, with a judge finding the court has jurisdiction to hear the case after an ICSID panel declined to arbitrate the dispute.
Law firm Maurice Blackburn has fired its opening salvo in a high-stakes appeal of a judge’s decision rejecting its class action against BHP over the Brazilian dam failure, saying the ruling deprived group members of pocketing higher net returns on any recovery and of choosing a more experienced firm to run the case for them.
Accounting firm Pitcher Partners, which is facing two shareholder class actions over auditing work for Slater & Gordon, is considering filing claims of its own against the law firm’s current auditor, Ernst & Young.