A judge has given his blessing to a $49.7 million settlement of two class actions that alleged infant food maker Bellamy’s misled investors about its China growth strategy and declining market share in Australia.
Victorian Attorney-General Jill Hennessy is “cautiously confident” that her bill allowing lawyers in the state to charge contingency fees will pass as early as next week, but the class action reform couldn’t come soon enough, she says.
Law firm Maurice Blackburn has taken legal action on behalf of a sports club which missed out on funding from a $100 million grants program, in what could be a test case for other clubs that lost out because of the so-called ‘sports rorts’ affair.
Slater and Gordon has expanded its Get Your Insurance Back campaign, launching class actions against ANZ and Westpac over allegedly worthless consumer credit insurance, just three months after it reached a $49.5 million settlement with NAB in a class action over similar insurance.
A judge has questioned whether he should sign off on a $49.5 million settlement in a class action against National Australia Bank over allegedly worthless credit card insurance, which he said had a “fundamental flaw” because it did not contain a provision automatically cancelling group members’ policies.
A law firm has won its case seeking preliminary discovery from Essential Energy to pursue a possible class action against the state-owned electricity infrastructure company over the 2018 Tathra bushfire in NSW.
AMP will face a class action alleging its financial representatives pushed AMP inflated insurance policies onto 100,000 customers despite knowing that better policies could be found through other providers.
With Victoria set to pass legislation permitting law firms to charge contingency fees, experts have raised fears of an exodus of class actions from other states and the federal system. But the Federal Court, which hears about two-thirds of Australia’s representative proceedings, is not likely to surrender easily.
A bitter feud between the national office of the Construction Forestry Maritime Mining and Energy Union and union heayweight John Setka, who is accused of poaching members from the manufacturing division, should not play out in court, lawyers for Setka said Wednesday.
Maurice Blackburn has become the second law firm to consider a shareholder class action against Treasury Wine Estates over a recent earnings downgrade.