A judge refused Tuesday to step down from two cases brought by Bendigo and Adelaide Bank seeking to claw back loans from group members in a settled class action over Great Southern Group’s managed investment schemes, saying no apprehension of bias could arise.
The leader of the notorious cult known as The Family, who is facing a class action by sect members who claim they were tortured and sexually abused as children in her care, has denied the allegations in a bare-bones defence.
A pro bono class action on behalf of asylum seekers who allege they were unlawfully imprisoned in Australian immigration detention centres has been shut down by the Federal Court, which ruled Monday it had no jurisdiction to hear the proceeding.
A $3 million settlement in the shareholder class action against the directors of failed mining company Kagara has been approved, with a Federal Court judge saying the amount is fair and reasonable despite two-thirds of it going to the lawyers and funder that brought the case.
The Commonwealth Bank of Australia is seeking to strike out portions of a shareholder class action over allegedly lax anti-money laundering and anti-terrorism financing controls it calls a “vague penumbra” that leaves the bank in the dark about the case against it.
Private follow-on actions for consumer law violations will be easier to bring under a new bill recently introduced in the Senate, a potential boon to class action lawyers.
The Full Federal Court has handed Johnson & Johnson unit Ethicon a victory in the class action over its allegedly defective vaginal mesh devices, partly reversing a judge’s decision that expanded the class post-trial.
The Public Trustee of Queensland asked a court Wednesday for indemnity costs from a global litigation funder its says was the “real moving force” behind a dismissed investor class action it called a “nakedly speculative venture”.
Fundraising company Appco Group Australia has failed in its bid to put a massive sham contracting class action in the Federal Court on hold while it fights a ruling that let the case continue as a representative proceeding.
Lawyers on both sides of the class action against American Medical Services over pelvic mesh implants have taken steps to ensure the case proceeds with greater efficiency than the pelvic mesh class action against Johnson & Johnson, which went to an 89-day trial five years after that case was filed.