A judge has refused a bid to file a new pleading in a $1.3 million “squabble” with an “unfortunate history” between a client and his former solicitors, one of whom is now dead, dating back to 1993.
The son of the funder behind a class action at the centre of scandalous misconduct claims says he would have sought advice from a family friend if he had realised his father and counsel leading the case were misleading the court to inflate their profits from a $64 million settlement.
Solicitor Alex Elliott has said it never clicked with him that members of the legal team running the Banksia class action were misleading an appeals court when his father — the mastermind behind the alleged deception — told him to sign cheques for lawyers that they could not cash.
The funder accused of a fraudulent scheme to pocket inflated fees from the Banksia Securities class action produced less than 200 documents to the contradictor in the case and invented a story about a routine email purging practice to explain the discovery hole, a court has heard.
The son of Banksia Securities class action funder Mark Elliott questioned his father on whether it was “right” to rip up a $64 million settlement with the collapsed lender’s trustee if the deal didn’t guarantee him a $12.8 million commission, a court has heard.
Lawyer Alex Elliott has told a judge he didn’t know when he postdated cheques for members of the Banksia class action legal team that it was done to mislead the appeals court in the case, but has admitted that in hindsight “it doesn’t look good”.
The mastermind behind an alleged fraudulent scheme by members of the legal team running the class action over the collapse of Banksia Securities was a “brilliant operator”, his son has told a court.
A judge has confined the scope of questions lawyers can ask disgraced senior barrister Norman O’Bryan when he takes the stand this week to give evidence for the son of the mastermind behind an alleged fee scam in the Banksia Securities class action.
Last-minute discovery of emails by the solicitor facing accusations of complicity in a fraudulent scheme by his father and the barristers leading a class action over the collapse of Banksia Securities has been labelled a “professional disgrace” that has twice delayed his trial.
A finding this week that Norton Rose Fulbright intentionally misled a former lawyer in an employment dispute and abused the court’s processes threatens the legal career of an equity partner at the firm and is a warning to all firms to think twice before representing themselves in cases involving soured professional relationships.