Johnson Winter & Slattery persisted with a shareholder class action over auditing advice given to Slater & Gordon despite concerns about the strength of the claims raised in late 2017, Pitcher Partners has told the Federal Court as it seeks indemnity costs for the now abandoned proceeding.
Australia’s leading livestock group cannot block US company Branhaven from amending its application for a bovine genome patent, which the group has worried could harm the Australian cattle industry’s ability to use genetic tests.
Professional services firm EY UK has been added as a respondent in a shareholder class action against Pitcher Partners over advice given to law firm Slater and Gordon in its disastrous $1.3 billion acquisition of the UK-based Quindell in 2015, almost two years after the class action was filed.
Pitcher Partners says the lead applicant in a discontinued class action over its auditing of Slater and Gordon should cover the costs for cross-claims it brought against nine parties, including the law firm and several of its former directors.
The law firm behind a long-running class action against Pitcher Partners over its auditing of Slater and Gordon is seeking court approval to drop the case, leaving the funder that bankrolled the proceeding to defend an application for indemnity costs.
Slater and Gordon’s conduct when settling a previous securities class action against it armed the lead plaintiff with the information he needed to later bring a class action against Arnold Bloch Leibler, a court has heard.
Arnold Bloch Leibler has been granted access to due diligence docs related to Slater and Gordon’s $1.2 billion acquisition of professional services firm Quindell, to use in its defence of a class action over advice it gave on the troubled acquisition.
Accounting giant Ernst & Young, which has been dragged into two class actions by Slater & Gordon shareholders, has shot back at claims it was negligent in its 2015 audit report of the law firm’s UK division, which included a review of the firm’s disastrous acquisition of Quindell’s professional services arm that found no impairment on the goodwill value of the deal.
Former health minister and Prime Trust director Michael Wooldridge wants court approval to manage four corporations, despite a recent ruling from the Full Federal Court that reimposed a ban on him and three other former directors of the collapsed retirement village for violations of the Corporations Act.
The Full Federal Court has reimposed bans against four former directors of collapsed retirement village owner Prime Trust, including former federal health minister Michael Wooldridge, following a successful High Court challenge by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission.