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.
Future orders putting all class action group members on the hook for a funder’s commission in the wake of the High Court’s common fund ruling could be made under the court’s broad equitable powers, not just statutory power, a Federal Court judge has hinted.
The law firms running two competing product liability class actions against chemical giant Monsanto over its allegedly cancer-causing weed killer have been unable to reach agreement on how they will jointly manage the cases, a court has heard.
The funder behind a class action against Westpac over allegedly excessive insurance premiums has confirmed that it will continue backing the case despite earlier concerns it may pull out in the wake of the High Court’s landmark ruling on common fund orders.
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.
Engineering services company CIMIC will fork over $32.4 million to settle a shareholder class action, with group members expected to get 40 per cent of the settlement total if the court approves the requested legal costs and funder’s commission.
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.
The lead applicant in a shareholder class action against laser technology company Arasor will walk away with a fraction of the approximately $508,000 in legal and other bills it has racked up in disputes with the ATO and funder International Litigation Partners following the approval of a $19.25 million class action settlement more than two years ago.
The High Court’s recent ruling putting a stop to the practice of judges issuing common fund orders at the early stages of class action proceedings, while “not a good development”, wasn’t the end of the class action regime as we know it, a Federal Court judge has said.
Two shareholder class actions against failed electronics retailer Dick Smith will head to trial in March, after a failed attempt to resolve the long-running dispute in mediation.