As states across Australia grapple with lockdowns and rising COVID-19 cases, lawyers practising in a range of areas, from employment to insurance, are bracing for a fresh wave of pandemic-related litigation before the year is out.
The applicant in a class action against Volkswagen over defective Takata airbags has appealed a ruling dismissing the case for failing to establish any loss or damage.
Retirement home provider Aveo Group, which is facing a class action by residents, wants a court to determine group members’ loss in a preliminary hearing, but a judge has questioned whether he is barred from deciding the “hypothetical” question.
A shareholder class action against defunct fund manager Blue Sky Investments and others will be filed by the end of the year, Lawyerly has learned.
A judge has again suggested the Full Court should weigh in on whether the court has the power to make class closure orders, but the barrister for the applicant in an underpayments class action against Domino’s Pizza told the judge her client may not want to be the test case.
Four Victorian hospital operators have been ordered not to talk with or propose settlements with junior doctors that are targeted in three class actions accusing them of failing to pay junior doctors for overtime hours worked.
The Murray-Darling Basin Authority will soon make its case directly to an appeals court that it can rely on defences limiting its liability to farmers in a class action alleging negligent oversight of the river system, a question that could have implications for other climate change cases against government agencies.
The Commonwealth Bank of Australia has slammed an attempt by a class action to “trawl through” its Chief Executive Officer’s emails in search of correspondence regarding it decision to rebate commissions grandfathered by the Future of Financial Advice reforms.
A law firm is investigating a potential class action on behalf of pet owners whose dogs have died or fallen ill after consuming food contaminated with a known toxin.
Reforms by the Morrison government passed earlier this month weakening continuous disclosure obligations will spur corporate defendants to engage in “expensive interlocutory warfare” to shut down class actions right off the bat, and plaintiffs lawyers are waiting to see how the courts interpret the new laws to determine these early strike-out fights.