Leading lawyers have welcomed a new practice note in the Commercial Court division of the Victorian Supreme Court, including a “rigid framework” to cut down on interlocutory disputation which is expected to benefit commercial class action litigants, but some say the note “should have gone further” to compel discovery from defendants.
Law firm HWL Ebsworth has successfully appealed a decision finding that its negligent advice over property in Paramatta’s ‘Auto Alley’ cost a client $2 million, with an appeals court finding the commercial opportunity lost by the client had no value.
A Perth solicitor found guilty of professional misconduct for failing to pay a barrister’s $137,000 bill and deliberately misleading the Legal Practice Board of WA has been struck from the roll of practitioners.
A litigant in an estate dispute dropped his lawyers and filed a notice to the court naming Dentons Australia as his new firm of solicitors. Unhappily for him he made two mistakes: filing the notice himself, and apparently failing to tell anyone at Dentons he had hired them.
The litigation funder and lead plaintiffs in a class action against Queensland-owned Gladstone Ports are in dispute over who should be engaged to act in the long-running case after the solicitor on record left Clyde & Co for a rival law firm.
Former Bellamy’s Australia director Jan Cameron has been fined $8,000 after being found guilty of two counts of breaching the Corporations Act for failing to disclose her stake in the baby formula company.
The state of Victoria has won its bid to prevent lawyers for a class action over Victoria’s COVID-19 hotel quarantine debacle from proofing lay witnesses, ahead of a criminal trial against the Department of Health, which is due to start in May.
A former corporate adviser will spend at least nine months in jail after pleading guilty to trading in Genesis Minerals shares in September 2021 with insider knowledge, netting almost $60,000 in profits.
When the Supreme Court of Victoria considers for the first time a settlement reached in a class action run on a contingency fee basis, it will grapple with some novel questions, including whether to trim the 27.5 per cent group costs order granted to Slater & Gordon at the outset of the case, legal experts say.
A court has struck the name of an Adelaide solicitor from the roll for failing to pay six barristers and misappropriating trust funds, finding the misconduct was not excused by his financial difficulties.