AFT Pharmaceuticals has suffered another blow over its Maxigesic advertisements, with a judge finding the marketing material misled consumers by claiming to provide better, faster and more effective pain relief than paracetamol or ibuprofen.
Generic drug maker Sandoz has successfully appealed a $26.3 million judgment finding it infringed a patent owned by rival H Lundbeck relating to the top-selling antidepressant Lexapro.
Barrister Norman O’Bryan SC has abandoned his defence of misconduct allegations stemming from the Banksia Securities class action and expressed contrition to the court for his actions.
The judge overseeing a trial over legal fees and funding commission in the Banksia Securities class action has questioned whether the lawyers behind the case should remain on the roll of practitioners if allegations of misconduct aired in the hearing so far — which include billing for phantom costs — are made out.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has come up short in its challenge to a ruling that dismissed its case against TPG over contract terms that allowed the internet provider to keep customers’ unused prepaid funds on phone or internet plans.
Lawyer Mark Elliott was the “puppet master” behind the Banksia class action, retaning an old school mate to represent the lead applicant but in reality funding and running the proceedings with barristers Norman O’Bryan SC and Michael Symons to line their pockets at the expense of group members, a court has been told.
AMP has been hit with a cliass action by a group of financial planners over changes to its buyer of last resort policy last year, which cut the number of authoried advisers and retreated from a promise to buy back their businesses at a price based on a set multiple.
The funder and legal team behind a class action over the collapse of Banksia Securities billed for phantom costs in a “fraudulent scheme” to secure almost $20 million from the case, the contradictor investigating the purported misconduct has told a court.
The litigation funder behind the class action over Banksia Securities’ collapse has admitted it misled a costs consultant retained to report to the court on the reasonableness of the fees in the case, but says its commission should not take a hit as a result because the misconduct occurred after the litigation settled against Banksia’s trustee for $64 million.
Online odd jobs platform Service Seeking has been fined $600,000 for falsely representing that reviews on its platform were written by customers when in fact they were written by the businesses themselves.