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A settlement has been reached in a class action against a Sydney-based financial advisory firm by a group of Chinese investors over a property investment and visa scheme that allegedly saw group members lose $14.5 million in funds.
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.
A judge has declined to throw out a lawsuit brought against Qantas by a self-represented worker who was stood down, saying a "liberal and lenient" approach was needed.
The recent appointments to the High Court have mystified some senior members of the bar, raising questions about the secretive nature of the process and prompting renewed calls for an independent judicial appointments panel to expose the selection process to the light of day.
A former director of defunct financial services company Linchpin Capital, who is facing a class action as well as civil penalty proceedings by ASIC, can't put the brakes on his challenge to a five-year disqualification order by the regulator.
Class action filings in the Victoria Supreme Court have more than doubled in 2020, a trend that's likely to hold as law firms take advantage of a new law allowing them to earn contingency fees for running successful class actions.
The class members in the Gladstone Fisheries class action and their funder LCM Operations have successfully upheld in the Court of Appeal a declaration confirming the enforceability of the funding agreements in the case. This is an important decision, which validates the third party funding of class actions and puts to bed any residual arguments regarding the continuing effect of the medieval torts of maintenance and champerty on class action funding arrangements, says Susanna Taylor, LCM's head of investment, APAC.
Will we see an increase in class actions and funded litigation following the COVID-19 financial crisis similar to that following the global financial crisis? If there is an onslaught of corporate failures, including failed managed investment schemes, then such litigation seems likely to ensue. However, in the last year, Parliament and the courts have taken steps which might slow such litigious activity, says Susan Goodman of Holding Redlich.
A 65-year-old Melbourne man has become the first person in Australia to be charged with a foreign interference offence since new national security legislation was passed in 2018.
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.