A law firm has lost its bid to challenge a court order that it join forces with a competing firm in an investor class action against Blue Sky Alternative Investments and auditor EY.
A judge has approved a group costs order with a tiered contingency fee that will guarantee group members at least 72.5 per cent of any returns in a shareholder class action accusing Crown Resorts of lax anti-money laundering compliance over a six-year period.
The Northern Territory public housing authority has been hit with a class action alleging it failed to maintain public housing to a habitable standard in remote Aboriginal communities.
Westpac has agreed to pay $29.95 million to settle a class action alleging subsidiaries BT Funds Management Limited and Westpac Life Insurance Services Limited charged customers excessive superannuation fees between 2007 and 2019.
Queensland government-owned water services provider Sunwater has lost a bid to overturn a judgment letting insurer Liberty Mutual Insurance off the hook for its share of a $440 million settlement in the Queensland floods class action.
Competition among class action law firms is expected to heat up next year as veteran lawyer Jan Saddler departs Shine Lawyers to start her own firm.
A law firm has dropped plans to bring a second set of class actions alleging Apple and Google engaged in anti-competitive conduct in operating their app stores, but will act as an “agent” for the first-to-file firm.
A recent ruling cutting the contingency fee sought by a plaintiff law firm shows competition to run class actions will drive down the percentage payout courts are willing to permit. And as more firms enter the market for a slice of the returns, the downward pressure on profits will only build.
A judge has described as “extraordinary” a law firm’s argument that the court should approve a $5.8 million settlement in an underpayments class action against the On The Run convenience store chain partly because it ran out of funds to take the case to trial.
Two Dixon Advisory insurers have lost a bid to limit the details of insurance policies handed over to a class action purported to worth $463 million, after a judge’s ruled the collapsed wealth manager should disclose its insurance for liability in the case.