A judge has agreed to sign off on an order in a massive class action against Westpac that could give 25 percent of any recovery to the litigation funder underwriting the case, on the condition that the funder accept a rate reflecting the net, not the gross, sum.
AMP has prevailed in a hard-fought fight over where it will defend five shareholder class actions brought in the wake of the Banking Royal Commission, in a precedent-setting judgement that provides a road map for future jurisdictional battles over competing class actions.
The Full Federal Court has handed Johnson & Johnson unit Ethicon a victory in the class action over its allegedly defective vaginal mesh devices, partly reversing a judge’s decision that expanded the class post-trial.
Lawyers on both sides of the class action against American Medical Services over pelvic mesh implants have taken steps to ensure the case proceeds with greater efficiency than the pelvic mesh class action against Johnson & Johnson, which went to an 89-day trial five years after that case was filed.
Embattled financial giant AMP on Tuesday criticised concerns raised by lawyers for the federal class actions about group members’ opt out rights, saying the concerns were a “red herring” in the fight against an order transferring their cases to the NSW Supreme Court.
AMP has slammed arguments that group members in four Federal Court class actions could face a jurisdictional limitation on their claims of disclosure breaches if their cases are transferred to state court, saying no such disadvantage exists.
Ethicon told the Full Federal Court on Monday that the judge overseeing the marathon class action against it over allegedly defective vaginal mesh devices got it wrong when she reset the dates for inclusion in the class.
The Federal Court offers group members in the shareholder class actions against AMP a major legal advantage over the NSW Supreme Court, lawyers for the federal cases have argued ahead of a hearing in the controversial jurisdictional battle.
Shine Lawyers has filed a class action against the Department of Defence on behalf of the town of Katherine alleging it has been “devastated” by exposure to toxic chemicals from a nearby DoD base that have been linked to certain cancers and immune dysfunction.
The country’s biggest law firms were among the first in line to weigh in on changes to the class action regime proposed by the Australian Law Reform Commission, with one global firm cautioning against a weakening of continuous disclosure laws.