As the no win, no fee model comes out on top in another high profile class action beauty contest, legal experts say third-party litigation funders will need to evolve and “fight back” to stay competitive.
Facing laws strongly favouring plaintiffs and defamation claims based on allegations of an historic rape with no witnesses, the ABC has an uphill battle in defending itself against Attorney-General Christian Porterâs case alleging the national broadcaster engaged in a campaign to destroy his reputation, experts say.
Lawyers and experts welcomed the High Courtâs ruling Wednesday, which approved a class action beauty parade approach to dealing with competing proceedings and provided guidance as to how judges might otherwise manage the problem of duplicative cases. Here, Lawyerly outlines the important things to take away from the majorityâs judgment.
As pressure mounts for the board of MinterEllison to remove the law firm’s CEO in response to a staff email apologising for a partner’s representation of the federal attorney general, legal ethics experts told Lawyerly law firms must be free to vet potential clients, and that social issues may in the future play a bigger role in deciding whether to reject matters.
In a year headlined by partisan sparring and mudslinging over the Federal Governmentâs class action reform effort, judges forged ahead to refine the class action regime, issuing significant judgments on common fund orders and class closure, and handing the first post-trial win to a company in a shareholder class action. Here, Lawyerly takes you through some of the major class action events in 2020 and their consequences for the year ahead.
Payouts in class actions in 2020 largely kept pace with the previous year despite the financial strain of the COVID-19 pandemic, with companies and other defendants paying more than $696 million to settle class actions last year.
A finding this week that Norton Rose Fulbright intentionally misled a former lawyer in an employment dispute and abused the courtâs 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.
Federal Court Justices Jacqueline Gleeson and Simon Steward are safe and steady appointments to the High Court that are unlikely to disrupt the current culture of the bench and do nothing to assuage concerns about the opacity of the selection process.
A judge’s decision to throw out a shareholder class action against engineering company Worley is a loss for plaintiffs lawyers and could result in fewer listed companies willing to settle cases alleging they breached their disclosure obligations, but the ruling is not likely to have a significant chilling effect on securities litigation.
Barrister Norman O’Bryan has accepted that he should be struck from the roll of legal practitioners after dropping his defence mid-trial against claims of professional misconduct as senior counsel for a class action financed by the late Mark Elliott, but the consequences for the once high-flying silk might not end there.