New requirements that funded class actions be run as managed investment schemes will throw up myriad new questions for the courts, with lawyers predicting novel challenges by defendants and group members and an altered landscape for competing class actions.
A Victoria Supreme Court judge will hear the second ever application for a group costs order in a shareholder class action against G8 Education, saying she hoped to deal with the bid in a “straightforward way”.
A judge hearing a $2 million dispute between a former tenured professor and the University of New South Wales has lamented the lengthy pleadings filed in Fair Work cases, saying “everything but the kitchen sink seems to be thrown in, without any discrimination”.
A judge has rejected an application by the plaintiffs in two class actions against Freedom Foods and Deloitte to run their cases side-by-side, but said she would have granted a bid to consolidate the proceedings had that been sought.
A former barrister has continued to practice in local courts without a valid practising certificate, in “very serious” criminal contempt of a court-ordered injunction, the NSW Bar Association has told a court.
A judge has refused a bid by accounting firms Pitcher Partners and EY to access share trading data of unregistered group members in a securities class action over advice to Slater & Gordon, despite claims upcoming mediation will be “pointless” without the information.
A Forum Finance director is unable to file a defence against Westpac’s $400 million fraud case because his former solicitor has refused to hand over case files to his new lawyers until he pays a “remarkable” $300,000 legal bill, a court has heard.
Investors have won a bid to freeze the assets of cryptocurrency exchange platform operator Blockchain Global after it allegedly stole $10.3 million from ninety-four traders.
While a first test case in NSW rejected insurers’ interpretation of infectious disease exclusions in COVID-19 business interruption policies, potentially putting the industry on the hook for billions of dollars in claims, QBE says the law is on its side in Victoria.
A Melbourne law firm has lost its bid for indemnity costs after it failed to convince a judge that its settlement offer to a former client was anything more than a demand to capitulate in a “hard fought” legal battle over a $24.5 million East Melbourne development.