Accounting giant Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu will not face cross claims over the collapse of failed retailer Dick Smith when a hearing of three shareholder class actions kicks off in three months.
The litigation funder financing the second of two recently settled shareholder class actions against Murray Goulburn will face similar scrutiny over its commission as the funder behind the first action.
Troubled retail technology firm Irexchange is accused of misleading shareholders through three different capital raising offers, according to a new Federal Court case brought by investors who sunk over $4.5 million into the company.
A judge has consolidated competing shareholder class actions against builder Lendlease brought by rival plaintiffs law firms, but has rejected the firms’ bid to jointly run the litigation and says one of them must go.
Shareholders have appealed a ruling that found a “serious problem” with market-based causation and dismissed three cases against the liquidator of failed global financial services firm Babcock & Brown.
Shareholders of collapsed steel and mining giant Arrium have won the OK to question a one-time director over possible class action claims that former officers misled the market and that auditor KPMG was negligent in preparing a healthy financial report just two years before the company went under.
Whether judges can alter the terms of litigation funding agreements in class actions is a question that will remain unsettled for now, after litigation funder IMF Bentham chose to sidestep a lengthy, costly and risky challenge to the reach of the court’s powers.
The former chief financial officer of Murray Goulburn has asked a judge to relieve him from any disqualification order sought by the corporate watchdog in its case over his alleged role in the milk supplier’s continuous disclosure breaches, saying he is already the subject of orders that ban him from the dairy industry.
An average of 23 class actions have been filed every year in Australia since the class action regime was introduced in 1992, a number that belies recent claims of an explosion in litigation, a new report by a leading class action expert says.
Certain claims in a shareholder class action against insolvent training company Vocation and auditor PricewaterhouseCoopers have been dropped, as the long-running case awaits a new trial date pending the outcome of a separate Full Court appeal.