Ernst & Young has settled all claims against it in a shareholder class action alleging the Big Four accounting firm and Pitcher Partners signed off on an overly rosy year-end financial report that failed to disclose risks and impairments associated with the law firm’s disastrous $1.2 billion acquisition of UK insurance claims company Quindell.
A litigation funder challenging a decision underpinning recently enacted rules that require class actions to be registered as managed investment schemes told an appeals court Wednesday the decision was plainly wrong and the regime unworkable.
Victoria’s Emergency Services Telecommunications Authority may be hit with a class action over alleged systemic failures in its ambulance call handling operations that may have led to at least 15 deaths.
A unit of Suncorp Group has reached an in-principle settlement in a class action over alleged conflicted remuneration on the first day of an expected 25-day trial.
A shareholder class action against Treasury Wine Estates has won access to information said to prove there were reduced wine sales in the United States, with a judge finding the wine producer’s redactions of board papers were “not justified”.
With the Australian Labor Party to form government after Saturday’s election defeat for the Coalition, class action lawyers are looking forward to reforms that expand access to justice, enshrine the court’s power to supervise costs and wind back Morrison-era legislation.
The applicants in a class action against The Cosmetic Institute and twelve doctors over allegedly “incompetent” breast augmentation surgery have won court approval to expand their case to allege misleading and deceptive conduct and breaches of the consumer guarantees in the Australian Consumer Law.
A long-running class action over the Opal Tower disaster has settled, along with two related cases over the defective building, as a five-week trial was set to begin.
Shine Lawyers has beaten out class action rival Piper Alderman in a battle to lead a class action worth up to $463 million against collapsed wealth managers Dixon Advisory, with a judge finding the firm’s no win, no fee model was likely to result in a greater return to group members.
A judge deciding one of the first ever applications by a law firm for a percentage cut of a class action will have to determine whether Victoria’s ground-breaking contingency fee legislation allows a group costs order to operate with a sliding percentage return.