Law firms would be able to charge contingency fees and the corporate disclosure obligations would go under the microscope as part of a shake-up of the class action regime recommended by the Australian Law Reform Commission.
Responding to a judge’s criticism of the class action “beauty parade”, two rival law firms have come up with a plan to deal with their competing shareholder class actions against Brambles.
A judge has shot down a bid by Cash Converters to recuse himself from hearing arguments for a $16.4 million class action settlement, saying his advice while still a barrister to the law firm running the proceedings did not give rise to apprehended bias.
The cracks that led to the evacuation of Sydney’s Opal Tower and threats of litigation have been blamed on design and construction issues, but the building is structurally sound and not in danger of collapse, according to an interim report commissioned by the NSW Government.
The ACCC does not need to prove Volkswagen knew about the diesel emissions software at the heart of its action against the car giant — that’s just a factor that will magnify penalties in the case, the regulator has told a court.
From a record-setting funderâs cut to the first call for ââproportionalityâ, last year saw a number of groundbreaking judgments approving class action settlements worth more than half a billion dollars. Here are the 10 biggest settlements of 2018, and the law firms and funders that negotiated them. Â
Two law firms have launched formal investigations into possible class actions over Sydney’s defective Opal Tower, inviting owners of units in the “crumbling” building to register their interest in joining legal proceedings.
A judge who signed off on a contested $36.5 million settlement to resolve a $1 billion class action against Slater & Gordon has explained his reasons a year later, saying the “unusual” deal flowed from the law firm’s “dire financial situation”.
The former CEO of Radio Rentals, James Marshall, has been dragged into a consumer class action alleging he knew the home goods rental company pushed misleading leases onto vulnerable consumers.
Last year was an exciting one for class action lawyers, with monumental court decisions on competing cases, cross-jurisdictional spats, proportionality in settlements and the power of judges to decide how a recovery is distributed. Here, top class action litigators tell us what the most significant rulings of 2018 were and why the decisions will continue to matter this year.