A judge has signed off on a $16.5 million settlement of a shareholder class action against collapsed engineering and construction company Forge Group.
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.
Infant food maker Bellamy’s has agreed to pay $49.7 million to settle two shareholder class actions alleging the company misled investors in 2016 about its China growth strategy and declining infant formula market share in Australia.
Motorola has urged the Full Federal Court to uphold a decision dismissing an amended defence by Chinese rival Hytera Communications that sought to blame the US tech company for not alerting it to the alleged theft of its source code sooner, saying a similar argument had already failed in an ongoing trade secrets case in the US.
Rio Tinto subsidiary Technological Resources has successfully challenged a decision by IP Australia to reject a patent application for a method of separating mined material, with a judge finding the claimed invention was not a collection of mere working directions as a delegate had found.
The former chief financial officer of Murray Goulburn has asked a judge to relieve him from any disqualification order sought by the corporate watchdog in its case over his alleged role in the milk supplier’s continuous disclosure breaches, saying he is already the subject of orders that ban him from the dairy industry.
Certain claims in a shareholder class action against insolvent training company Vocation and auditor PricewaterhouseCoopers have been dropped, as the long-running case awaits a new trial date pending the outcome of a separate Full Court appeal.
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.
Unique International College has been slapped with a $4.165 million penalty after a court found the defunct vocational trainer engaged in unconscionable conduct in enrolling students in courses costing up to $22,000.
The law firm and funder behind a class action against collapsed engineering and construction company Forge Group, former directors and their insurers, which has now settled for $16.5 million, have proposed cuts that would see $8.25 million left over for distribution to group members.