According to this article by Radio Australia, a class action has been filed in the Fiji High Court on behalf of the members of the Great Council of Chiefs, who were terminated by the interim Fijian government. The class alleges that the interim government had no authority to terminate the body.

This Bloomberg article adds that the tribal chiefs were “fired for refusing to confirm the regime’s nominee for vice president.” The Council of Chiefs is made up of 51 high chiefs from throughout the archipelago. Only four chiefs have joined the class action so far, but their chairman told Bloomberg that more are expected to participate.

According to an article in today’s Sydney Morning Herald, an Australian law firm called Slater & Gordon today became the first law firm in the world to be listed on a stock exchange.

The stock of the Melbourne, Australia-based law firm reportedly closed at $1.40 in its first day of trading on the Australian Stock Exchange, after gaining 40 cents on the initial public offer (IPO) price.

The article also notes that shareholders in the law firm do not need to wonder where they stand with the law firm–the firm’s prospectus expressly “warns investors they are third on the list of its priorities, behind primary duties to the court and its clients.”

Thanks to the Legal Times’ BLT for the link to the SMH article.

You already know about class actions pending in the District Court of Tel-Aviv, but how about the Jerusalem District Court? According to this article, that’s where a class action suit was filed yesterday for NIS 20 million against the importers of the popular “Crocs” shoes.

The suit was filed against the importer, New Cinema Ltd., and its owner, Amos Horowitz. According to the article, the suit claims that

Horowitz and his company “initiated and organized a cartel that fixed prices for imported shoes of the Crocs brand between all the stores that sell these shoes to the consumer.”

The plaintiffs said that New Cinema forced stores to sell the shoes at a set price and had warned the stores that if they lowered the price, they would halt supplies to such stores.

According to this website, NIS 20 million converts to just under US $5 million.

Thanks to Adam Savett of SLW 2.0 for the link.

Remember last week’s article in Legal Week announcing that Skadden had "launched a class action defence practice in the UK in preparation for what it believes could be an onslaught of group actions across Europe?"  Not so, according to this post on the Blog of the Legal Times. 

The "BLT" reports that D.C.-based Skadden partner Andrew Sandler, who had reportedly set up the new practice, told it that while Skadden is "carefully monitoring" the development of class action litigation in Europe, the firm hasn’t launched any such practice group.

According to this article in The Hindu, Mr. R. Narayanaswamy, Professor of Finance and Control at IIM, Bangalore, recently observed that given the increase in the number of Indian companies becoming more globalized in their operations, there is a pressing need for adoption of global accounting standards.  Mr. Narayanaswamy suggests that a simple way to boost accounting standards in India is to "empower shareholders by allowing private shareholder litigation against company management and auditors. As the company and securities laws stand now, only the company can sue its managers and auditors for damages for their failure to show due care and diligence in their work.”

He adds that allowing such private litigation "would be a major step forward, though I am not for class action suits at the moment.”

According to this article, a Chilean court "has accepted a class action lawsuit seeking damages of USD260 million against Telefónica-owned mobile operator Movistar for alleged service quality failures, according to BNamericas citing local press reports."

First Nigeria and now Chile?  Who knew?

A ground-breaking settlement that is said to be the first-ever pan-European class settlement of securities fraud claims has been reportedly reached to resolve claims against Royal Dutch Shell.  As discussed here and here, the US law firm Grant & Eisenhofer, representing a European investment group of more than 50 investors, reached the $353 million settlement with Shell over the company’s alleged overstatement of its oil and gas reserves.

As noted in the article above from TheLawyer.com,

Although there is no legal mechanism to pursue class action, under a new statute never before applied to a securities claim Dutch law allows the court to accept a collective resolution of a dispute as long as both sides petition the court, even in the absence of a civil lawsuit.

This Corporate Crime Reporter article adds that the settlement covers all non-U.S. purchasers of Shell stock made on European securities exchanges during the period of the improper reserve accounting, and includes an interesting quote from G&E partner Jay Eisenhofer:

“This is truly an unprecedented settlement of a large-scale European shareholder dispute,” said Jay Eisenhofer, an attorney representing the investment groups. “The scale of recovery and the sheer collective unity of the investor group are both unique in a European context.”

“European investors do not have the same options to pursue securities claims that are available to U.S. investors through class actions,” Eisenhofer said. “By coming together in such a large fashion across multiple countries, and petitioning the Amsterdam Court of Appeals to work directly with Shell to settle their claims, this group of trans-European investors has struck a uniquely European resolution to settling a European securities claim - it truly has never been done before.”

Remember this post about how Canada was only major developed country without unified securities regulation?  Now, as discussed in this article from Bloomberg, that fact is being offered by many as the reason for what appears to be widespread insider trading in Canada.   A new study shows that aberrant trading patterns preceded 33 of the 52 Canadian mergers valued at more than C$200 million ($172.6 million) last year. 

The president of Measuredmarkets Inc., which authored the study, states that it would appear that suspicious trading is more prevalent in Canada than the U.S.   According to the article, this may stem from its "fractured, underfunded regulatory system, market experts say. There are 13 provincial and territorial agencies regulating securities markets in Canada, making it the lone member of the Group of Eight industrial nations without a national watchdog."

The article also offers the startling comparison that while the U.S. SEC spent $337 million on enforcement in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, the Ontario Securities Commission, which oversees the Toronto exchange (the nation’s main bourse), spent just C$924,000–and that was 60 percent over budget because of "high-profile cases.”

As discussed here, the UK’s National Association of Pension Funds published a paper last week entitled "Securities Litigation–Questions for Trustees" that breaks down several key issues for its pension scheme members.  A copy of that paper is available here.

Among the important issues addressed in the paper is whether pension "trustees have a fiduciary duty to join a securities class action."  The NAPF appears to conclude that there is at least a duty to file claims in securities class action settlements.  Its paper states that

no UK trustee has been sued for not joining a class action and even in the US a recent case against a mutual fund board did not come to court. That said, it seems self-evident that trustees have a duty to protect the assets in their scheme and that they should therefore at the very least not neglect opportunities to recoup losses, where the cost and effort are commensurate with the expected return. It is normally possible for a shareholder to join a SCA after it has been settled but before payments are made to the plaintiffs.

The National Association of Pension Funds advised its members during its annual Investment Conference in Edinburgh yesterday that they should monitor U.S. securities class actions more closely to ensure they don’t miss out on potentially big settlements.

As discussed in this Reuters article, NAPF, the governing body for the pension industry in the UK, told members that UK pension schemes have a "duty" to recoup losses for members from securities class action settlements, and should set out policies to monitor them.  According to NAPF, approximately $2.4 billion currently remains unclaimed by UK and European investors, largely due to unfamiliarity with the US system. 

One key point of confusion outside the US has historically been over the difference between (1) filing a securities class action lawsuit and actively litigating the case as a lead plaintiff and (2) filing a proof of claim in a securities class action to recover funds in a settlement.  Indeed, that distinction seems to get lost in another article on the NAPF’s advice to its members, which states that

The body governing Britain’s biggest pension funds advised its members to chase some $2.4 billion (£1.23 billion) in unclaimed damages from US securities class actions yesterday, putting it on a collision course with representatives of the UK’s largest investors….

But the Association of British Insurers (ABI), which represents Britain’s biggest fund management houses investing in the stock market on behalf of pension funds, is opposed to class actions.

It may be that the ABI is "opposed to class actions" and discourages its members from filing such cases, but I find it hard to believe that the ABI is opposed to its members filing proofs of claim in settlements to collect money that is rightfully theirs.  Is the article accurate or is this another example of the confusion discussed above?