A class action targeting security companies contracted by the Victorian government to guard returning travellers in hotel quarantine has been launched, bringing to three the number of group proceedings filed over the botched program.
Westpac has agreed to pay a whopping $1.3 billion civil penalty to resolve AUSTRAC enforcement action over the bank’s 23 million breaches of money laundering and counter-terrorism laws.
An appeals court has set aside an order requiring Alex Elliott, the son of the funder behind the Banksia securities class action, to give a “full and frank” explanation of his role in an alleged fraudulent scheme to inflate legal fees in the case.
The Queensland Supreme Court has shot down an “entirely speculative” bid by two Clive Palmer-owned companies to access information held by two law firms and a litigation funder, as the mining magnate mulls a lawsuit for potential breaches of a settlement reached in the Queensland Nickel liquidation proceedings.
The funder backing a shareholder class action against the directors of pharmaceutical firm QRxPharma will not seek to profit from a $7 million settlement in order to bring about a better return for group members, a judge has been told.
A judge has denied a request to grant priority status to a shareholder class action against Crown Resorts that would have allowed the Melbourne-based legal team running the case to access childcare and leave their homes for work while the state of Victoria remains in lockdown.
The director of the beleaguered Mayfair investment group, who has been self-represented in winding up proceedings by ASIC, has now entered into a late stage retainer with law firm Ashurst, with his barrister saying he could no longer manage the case on his own after the regulator filed a lengthy affidavit.
The Morrison Government has extended a temporary change to the continuous disclosure rules to give companies more wriggle room in updating shareholders during the coronavirus pandemic by six months, saying the change had allowed shareholders to remain informed while preventing “opportunistic class actions”.
Leading senior barristers and former judges are urging Victoria’s upper house to oppose the Andrews government’s COVID-19 Omnibus bill, saying legislation allowing citizens to make arrests was an overreach.
The managing partner of a high-profile Sydney law firm has told the barrister cross-examining him that the word menstrual means “monthly” in Latin, when explaining an email in which he slammed the firm’s former general manager’s practice of billing clients on a “menstrual based cycle”.
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