Lawyers are allowed to take a cut from a class action settlement or judgment under a so-called solicitors’ common fund order, the Full Federal Court has ruled, saying they are a permissive use of the court’s power.
The Federal Court is set to become a more attractive forum for class actions now that the Full Court has confirmed it has power to make orders granting solicitors a contingency fee from any settlement or judgment in a group proceeding.
A unit of petrol store chain EG Australia has sued Ashurst and LegalVision alleging they breached their implied duty of care through advice given to Woolworths about the assignment of a disputed Sydney petrol station lease.
The corporate regulator has secrued orders barring fintech giant PayPal from enforcing a term in its contracts with small businesses that set a two-month deadline for complaints about excess fees.
A group member in a class action against Johnson & Johnson unit DePuy International has lost his bid to challenge his compensation determination 12 years after the case settled, with a judge finding that the independent counsel conducting the determination was not bound by the rules of procedural fairness.
In a contest to run a class action against International Capital Markets over risky derivative products, a proposed consolidated proceeding has taken aim at third-to-file Banton Group for allegedly copying its case.
Santos has largely succeeded in its bid for documents from the Environmental Defenders Office and expert witnesses in a failed case challenging the construction of the oil and gas company’s $5.6 billion Barossa pipeline.
Industrial technology company Delta Building Automation has appealed a $1.5 million penalty for attempting to rig a bid for construction work on the National Gallery of Australia, a penalty five times the amount it claimed it should face.
PricewaterhouseCoopers has agreed to pay $8.25 million to settle a class action on behalf of Axsesstoday bondholders over an allegedly misleading bond prospectus, bringing the settlement total to $9.5 million after a group of insurers agreed to pay $1 million to settle the class action’s claims.
The Federal Court must guard against “exceptions by accretion” when weighing Westpac’s application to prevent the public from accessing documents filed in a lawsuit by the bank’s former head of strategy, which has resolved in a confidential settlement, a judge heard Wednesday.