Fearing passage of a contentious bill in parliament that threatens to curb open class actions, plaintiffs law firms and funders have raced to court with new cases in the past two weeks.
Spurred by the Banksia class action scandal, the federal government has implemented new regulations requiring litigation funders to manage conflicts of interest that arise when the lawyers acting on a class action have a “material financial interest” in the funder that’s running it.
Specialist workplace relations consultancy Employsure has been ordered to pay a $1 million penalty over a series of misleading Google advertisements, a figure significantly lower than the $5 million sought by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission.
The federal government’s latest class action reform bill that would effectively cap legal fees and funding commissions has narrowly passed the House of Representatives.
The Australian Securities and Investments Commission has imposed additional license conditions on the Australian Securities Exchange after operational issues created a “very serious” outage last year.
A committee report recommending passage of the Morrison government’s controversial class action reform bill was tabled in federal parliament Monday, with the committee’s chair touting the proposed legislation as putting an end to funders’ “windfall” profits and Labor panning the bill as a study in “Orwellian gaslighting”.
Changes negotiated to the Andrews government’s controversial pandemic bill fall short of protecting the rule of law, Victorian Bar head Róisín Annesley QC said Tuesday.
The Attorney General’s Department has been hammered with questions over an opinion by the former Solicitor-General that casts doubt on the constitutionality of the controversial class action bill before federal parliament.
A judge has made the “regrettable” call to postpone the trial in a case brought by workers challenging the Victorian government’s COVID-19 health directions until after they expire, blaming the workers for creating a series of “fruitless” delays.
A court has struck down a bid by unvaccinated nurses to restrain Monash Health from terminating their employment in accordance with the Victorian COVID-19 public health directions requiring them to be vaccinated, saying their case is “at best, weak”.