The country’s most experienced class action law firm won two and lost two in last year’s beauty parades before the courts, showing track record is not everything when it comes to winning carriage of cases and that picking the winner can be a tricky business. From line-ball decisions to law firm team-ups and the lowest contingency fee order yet, here’s how 2023’s class action contests went down.
The New South Wales government wants to strike out class action claims that police conducted illegal strip searches at music festivals in the state ‘as a matter of routine’ and that it should face exemplary damages.
Companies and government entities paid out less to settle class actions in 2023 than in the previous two years, with no mega settlements hitting their pocketbooks.
A judge has approved a 24 per cent group costs order in a consolidated class action against a2 Milk, noting the complexity of the claims against the dairy giant and saying a GCO would align the class action lawyers’ interests with group members’.
Noumi has largely lost its bid to shield from a class action parts of its inhouse counsel’s evidence supporting a privilege claim over 3,000 documents seen by Ashurst and PricewaterhouseCoopers during an investigation into the company’s financial position.
A judge has found that a lawsuit against the state of NSW over hundreds of allegedly illegal strip searches conducted by NSW police at music festivals over a six-year period should move forward as a class action.
A judge’s decision to chop $810,000 from the funder’s cut of a settled class action against Westpac sounds a warning to class action litigators that when it comes to determining the size of a commission, case budgets matter.
Optus has lodged an appeal of a judgment that found the teleco could not claim legal professional privilege to shield from a class action a report by consulting giant Deloitte into last year’s major data breach.
A judge overseeing a class action against Optus has said there is scope for the teleco to seek redactions of portions of a Deloitte report, which he ruled last Friday failed the test for protection under legal professional privilege.
A $29.95 million settlement resolving a superannuation class action against two Westpac units has won court approval. The judge overseeing the case has also indicated he will OK the litigation funder’s commission but only some of its after-the-event insurance premium.