Settlements totaling $39 million have been reached in two class actions against the former trustee of failed investment groups LKM Capital and GR Finance.
Three senior Federal Court judges will hear arguments Monday and Tuesday in a closely-watched appeal of a ruling that stayed two of three competing shareholder class actions against GetSwift as an abuse of process, and the impact of the Full Court’s ruling will be felt for a long time to come. Here are five major issues the court will be wrestling with over the next two days.
Former Slater & Gordon auditor Pitcher Partners has been hit with a class action alleging it signed off on an overly rosy 2015 year-end financial report that failed to disclose risks and impairments the firm faced from its recent acquisition of UK firm Quindell.
A judge has dismissed a bid by PriceWaterhouseCoopers to have one of two law firms bow out of a joint class action against the accounting giant after a lead applicant died.
BHP Billiton is facing the possibility of a second shareholder class action over the Fundao dam failure at its mine in Brazil, but the cases may be put on hold pending the outcome of homicide charges against company employees.
Shine Lawyers has filed a class action against the Department of Defence on behalf of the town of Katherine alleging it has been “devastated” by exposure to toxic chemicals from a nearby DoD base that have been linked to certain cancers and immune dysfunction.
The country’s biggest law firms were among the first in line to weigh in on changes to the class action regime proposed by the Australian Law Reform Commission, with one global firm cautioning against a weakening of continuous disclosure laws.
Forcing courts to choose a single winner in the battle over competing class actions would exacerbate the problems of overlapping cases and encourage the race to court, class action powerhouse Maurice Blackburn said Wednesday.
Law firm Squire Patton Boggs is again on the losing end of a ruling by the judge presiding over a shareholder class action against GetSwift, a case now better known for infighting among lawyers than for the allegations levelled against the tech startup.
Lawyers for two competing class actions against the Commonwealth Bank of Australia over breaches of anti-money laundering laws say the cases can happily co-exist, but whether the court will agree may well depend on the outcome of a closely-watched appeal in a separate battle over multiple proceedings.