A settlement of up to $1.325 million in an employment class action against labour hire firm Hays Specialist Recruitment has been approved, but a proposal by the applicant’s law firm to increase a promised limit on costs in order to resolve a row with a funder has drawn a judge’s ire.
A judge will allow the erstwhile funder of a settled underpayments class action against recruitment agency Hays to argue it should be allowed to recover against group members who signed a funding agreement several years ago, but said the claim was “not worth spending a vast amount of money on” and warned the funder against turning the case into a “circus”.
A judge hearing an appeal by a funder over its cut of a $98 million settlement in franchisee class actions against 7-Eleven has said the $12 million commission was “plainly too little”, and questioned if the class action judge had been “stuck” on the idea that common fund orders are bad.
Russia’s largest aluminium producer UC Rusal has lost a breach of contract lawsuit brought against six Rio Tinto companies after they refused to deliver alumina under a joint venture agreement on the basis that doing so would cause them to run afoul of export sanctions imposed after Russia invaded Ukraine.
The date has been set for a hearing in the second case to test the argument that judges lack power to make a common fund order when a class action settles, and the litigation funder challenging the argument can expect a sympathetic ear.
A litigation funder whose cut of a $98 million settlement in franchise class actions against 7-Eleven was slashed in half is challenging a judge’s finding that “strong reasons” exist to refuse it a common fund order.
An appeals court has shot down funder Augusta’s challenge to a decision that cut its commission in the Opal Tower class action, putting funders on notice that they will have to marshal compelling evidence to win approval for their returns from an increasingly watchful court.
The funder in the Opal Tower class action has appealed a judge’s decision to slash its commission for not disclosing proposed deductions from the settlement sum as percentages, telling the Full Court that group members could do “simple arithmetic”.
The High Court won’t hear an appeal by payday loan providers Cigna and BHF seeking to challenge a Full Court judgment that found they can’t dodge the obligations contained in the National Credit Code through their lending model.
A judge has approved a confidential settlement in a class action on behalf of 383 apartment owners in Sydney’s Opal Tower but slashed the amount sought by the funder.