Class Action Lawsuits In Australia

Australian law has seen a total of 329 class actions brought before the courts since an

amendment to The Federal Court Act Australia was made in 1992 effectively allowing this
form of litigation. There have been some very large class action lawsuits in Australia since
that time. The size of class actions was the very reason that the legislation was made in the
initial instance. British courts could become overwhelmed by many similar individual
lawsuits and the parliament in the 18th century recognized this as an issue and instituted
group litigation.

However it was in the United States in 1833 when the supreme court declared that individual
litigants did not have to be present for a group litigation or to proceed did large lawsuits
become practicable under the new moniker of representative litigation.

By 1966 large litigation actions were becoming commonplace, with environmentalists, civil
rights activists and consumer groups made full use of the group litigation laws to bring
multinational corporations to court and face accusations of negligence and wrong doing that
affected many everyday people.

In Australia class actions are still be used to bring the practice of large organisations under
scrutiny. In a recent case IMP Australia initiated over 10 class against the major banks of
Australia including the Commonwealth, ANZ, Westpac and NAB.

The grounds for the law suits was the allegation that Australian banks have routinely charged
Australian consumers up to $45AU for late fees on account debits. IMP Australia alleges on
the behalf of thousands of Australian consumers that 400 million dollars were syphoned from
average Australians illegitimately. The power of a class action is clearly evident in this
example. A single overdue fee, or even a few is simply not sufficient to go to the expense of
engaging a litigation lawyer. However when you look at thousands of litigants with millions
of dollars in fees then a class action becomes viable. In 2014 the Federal court awarded the
case to the plaintiff, saying that the late fees were extravagant, exorbitant, and
unconscionable and cited that on average processing a late payment cost the bank
approximately 50 cents. The ANZ appealed the decision and it was over turned at a full
sitting of the High Court.

The failure of this class action raised some concerns about the legitimacy of class actions in
Australia http://www.smh.com.au/business/consumer-affairs/after-the-high-court-threw-out-
the-anz-bank-fee-case-are-class-actions-cactus-20160729-gqgcpm.html

The ruling certainly protected the interest of big banks and gave the average Australian
consumer nowhere to go to redress late fees charged on accounts. However class actions are
far from defunct. The ruling against Ausnet energy over the Black Saturday bushfires was the
largest in the history of Australian Class actions.

Class actions are the only way that average Australians have the chance to act in a concerted
fashion against large organisations that infringe their rights. Negligence on the

part of Ausnet energy caused the death of 119 people in the Kilmore East Black Saturday
bushfires and caused an estimated 4.4 Billion in damages. In fairness perhaps Ausnet got off
lightly, for although it is a legal person, that a company is constituted as under law, a real
person would have been charged for the deaths of those poor unfortunates caught in the blaze.

Having the provision in law to instigate class actions on the behalf of hundreds if not
thousands of plaintiffs is an essential part of the Australian legal system. The checks and
balances between corporate power and consumer rights is one that sometimes requires to use
of large class actions to bring corporate powers to accountability.

If you believe that you have been the victim of a large corporation and wish to pursue the
matter with one of our compensation law specialists please contact us here:

https://personal-injury-lawyers.com.au/

Find Personal Injury Lawyers In your city.