A judge has sided in part with QBE Insurance and pared back a class action over allegedly worthless add-on insurance sold by ANZ to credit card and personal loan customers.
A judge has agreed to consolidate two shareholder class actions against Treasury Wine Estates over an earnings downgrade in January and will let two law firms jointly run the case, over the winemaker’s objections.
Five investment banks facing a class action for their alleged rigging of foreign exchange rates have slammed the “unclear” and “incredibly vague” case, saying it contains “literally trillions” of possible variations of the cartel agreement allegedly entered into.
Qantas has praised a Federal Court judgment ruling that the airline had no “genuine choice” other than standing down its workers during the COVID-19 pandemic, saying the judgment was a “victory for common sense”.
McMillan Shakespeare has settled a class action alleging one of its units engaged in unfair tactics and unconscionable conduct in the sale of car warranties that offered “no benefit or value” to consumers.
The Murray Goulburn class action run by Elliott Legal bears similarities to the Banksia class action, a case rife with scandal and offered up by opponents as proof of the problems with the class action regime. The leading lawyers were the same in both cases. In one they have abandoned any claim to their fees and have walked away from their careers. In the other they walked away with $5 million.
The judge overseeing a settled class action against Murray Goulburn, which earned millions of dollars for the same legal team accused of serious misconduct in the running of the Banksia class action, invited the parties last month to reopen the case, concerned he had been misled when approving the lawyers’ costs.
US white shoe firm White & Case has snagged a leading tax partner from Herbert Smith Freehills’ tax firm to bolster its growing team in Australia.
Herbert Smith Freehills has discovered it underpaid a number of its graduate lawyers, with some in the Big Six firm’s graduate ranks owed more than $20,000.
As the economic impact of Covid-19 continues to develop, we can expect promoters of class actions to explore claims which arise from the pandemic – some of these will be in familiar territory, whilst other claim may be novel, say Herbert Smith Freehills’ Harry Edwards and Dylan O’Keefe.