Quinn Emanuel has hit global insurance broker Jardine Lloyd Thompson with a class action for allegedly charging local councils in NSW hundreds of millions of dollars in excessive premiums over the past nine years, and the firm says there may be more lawsuits on the horizon.
The showdown between five law firms vying to lead a class action over the AMP fees for no service scandal kicked off in the NSW Supreme Court Thursday with counsel for one case saying the contest, although costly and consuming, would ultimately be a win for all class action participants.
AMP’s advice executive Jack Regan, the witness who aired the firm’s fees-for-no-service dirty laundry at the Royal Commission, has retired, a day before five law firms compete to lead a class action over the scandal.
A judge has taken a hatchet to Quinn Emanuel’s fees and the funder’s cut in a $12 million settlement of a class action against Bank of Queensland, a settlement which he previously described as one of the “worst” he’d ever seen.
Squire Patton Boggs has refused a request by rival Phi Finney McDonald for the details of group members it signed up to its now stayed shareholder class action against GetSwift, a court has learned, in the latest show of resistance by the losing law firm.
The court’s authority to shut down competing class actions is no longer in doubt after Tuesday’s Full Federal Court judgment in the case against GetSwift, and while there is no “silver bullet” when it comes to how judges must deal with multiple proceedings, there are key factors to weigh, the appeals court said. Here, experts provide the big takeaways from the landmark ruling.
Law firm Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan has launched a shareholder class action against engineering and infrastructure firm RCR Tomlinson after “catastrophic” losses caused by $57 million in write-downs on two of the company’s North Queensland solar farms.
The Full Federal Court has dismissed a challenge to a ruling that chose one of three shareholder class actions to proceed against GetSwift, saying the court had the power to permanently stay competing cases. But an injunction blocking the losing law firms from communicating with clients was going too far, it said.
Litigation funder Regency Funding has sought leave to intervene as a major player in one of two challenges to the courts’ powers to issue common fund orders in class actions, but it might have a fight on its hands.
A subsidiary of US-based PetroHunter Energy has defeated calls to toss its case over $70 million in allegedly unpaid contributions and contractual breaches stemming from a joint mining venture in the Northern Territory’s Beetaloo Basin.