National Australia Bank is setting aside a further $1.18 billion to compensate customers for dodgy adviser service fees, consumer credit insurance sales, and non-compliant advice.
Against a backdrop of an industrial relations system which has diminished union and workers’ power, class actions are again re-emerging as an alternative tool to challenge employers’ unlawful conduct. And in the current class actions landscape, the ability to run closed class proceedings on behalf of union members, or otherwise offer alternative fee arrangements to non-members in open class proceedings, is essential to trade unions’ willingness to embrace the representative proceeding regime, writes Slater & Gordon lawyer Alex Blennerhassett.
The judge overseeing competing employment class actions on behalf of casual coal miners against WorkPac has ordered the law firms running the cases to consider a proposal to jointly run the proceedings.
An elite Melbourne law firm has become the latest target of Slater & Gordon shareholders whose stock went south after the plaintiffs firm’s disastrous $1.2 billion acquisition of UK professional services outfit Quindell, facing a class action alleging it was negligent in its role conducting due diligence for the deal.
Labour hire company Workpac is seeking to stay two class actions over leave entitlements allegedly owed coal miners, amid a looming judgment from the Full Federal Court that will clarify the definition of casual employees.
A judge has thrown out the NRMA’s consumer case against the maritime union over its Sydney fast ferry campaign, ruling that a verdict in favour of the motoring body would have brought the “the entire field of industrial relations within the operation of consumer legislation”.
Two Westpac units have been hit with a class action over allegedly excessive superannuation interest rates, the third class action filed as part of Slater and Gordon’s $1 billion ‘Get Your Super Back’ campaign.
Insurance company Watchstone Group, which is facing a lawsuit by Slater & Gordon UK over a botched acquisition that brought the law firm to its knees, has secured approval to file a counterclaim alleging auditor PricewaterhouseCoopers engaged in “secret meetings” with the firm’s corporate finance adviser to gain leverage leading up to the deal.
Concerns about duplicative costs in multiple class actions are better addressed by case management decisions aimed at cutting excessive expense, not by limiting the amount lawyers representing group members can spend, the Full Federal Court has said in dismissing an appeal by baby food maker Bellamy’s.
Bellamy’s has lost its appeals court battle to limit the costs incurred by lawyers jointly running two shareholder class actions against the baby food maker.