Dam operators Seqwater and Sunwater have not ruled out appealing a judgment that found they, along with the state of Queensland, were negligent in the 2011 floods in the Southeast region of the state that left over 2,000 homes destroyed.
Engineering services company CIMIC has agreed to settle a long-running shareholder class action launched in the wake of media reports of an alleged $42 million bribe paid by the firm to win a lucrative oil contract.
A Federal Court judge has slapped Volkswagen with a record $125 million penalty over its emissions cheating scandal after expressing outrage at a “manifestly inadequate” $75 million settlement agreement reached with the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission.
A judge overseeing a consolidated class action against four AMP subsidiaries and two trustees over allegedly excessive superannuation fees has ordered the respondents to coordinate after the lead applicants raised concerns about duplication of work.
The State of Queensland will not appeal a ruling that found it, as well as the operators of two Queensland dams, were negligent in the 2011 floods in the Southeast region of the state that left over 2,000 homes destroyed.
The judge overseeing the settlement approval process in multiple class actions against Volkswagen over the diesel emissions scandal has criticised an application for a common fund order by the funder backing two Bannister Law-led lawsuits.
The Federal Court has imposed a higher-end penalty of $270,000 on the CFMEU and three officers for site obstruction, saying the union has “significant resources” and has demonstrated a “willingness to contravene industrial laws in a serious way”.
The High Court’s ruling Wednesday that judges have no power to issue a common fund order in the initial phases of a class action does not bind them after a settlement has been reached, a Federal Court judge said Friday.
A judge has given the green light to a $1.5 million settlement in a long-running class action against ANZ alleging it slapped customers with illegal fees, with group members expected to get no more than $100 and potentially walking away with “substantially less” than this.
The end of the common fund order is a setback for class actions that will see a revival of the days of closed proceedings, costly bookbuilding, higher commission rates and the shelving of worthy but risky cases, experts say, and all eyes will now turn to state and federal governments to see how they respond to calls for legislative intervention.