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GetSwift welcomes Federal Court ruling on class actions
Only one class action suit will proceed against logistics software start-up GetSwift, following an appeal to the Federal Court of Australia.
Jerome Doraisamy
In May of this year, GetSwift advised that the Federal Court of Australia had ordered that only one of three competing class actions – launched in the early months of this year regarding alleged breaches of ASX disclosure obligations – filed against it could continue.
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That decision was appealed to the Full Court of the Federal Court of Australia, earlier this week upheld the judgement at first instance, holding that only one class action – launched by Phi Finney McDonald on behalf of Raffaele Webb – will proceed.
The other two actions, brought by Squire Patton Boggs and Corrs Chambers Westgarth on behalf of Dwayne Perera and Shaun McTaggart respectively, were dismissed.
GetSwift is “pleased with this decision, which accords with its submissions”, it said in its ASX statement.
“The company will be seeking its costs incurred in respect of this carriage motion.”
“As previously advised, the company strongly disputes the allegations made, including any alleged loss, and is vigorously defending the proceedings. The company will continue to keep shareholders informed of developments,” it also noted.
Leave was granted to the parties to make submissions on the question of costs.
The ruling of the Full Court is good news for GetSwift, a spokesperson said, because the Full Court “substantially adopted GetSwift’s submissions on appeal to the effect that one proceeding is capable of vindicating the interests of all group members and therefore only one should be allowed to proceed.”
“The decision means that GetSwift will not be vexed with multiple actions in respect of the same issues – just the one: the Webb proceeding. The other two proceedings (Perera and McTaggart) remain permanently stayed. This will reduce the costs of defending the proceeding, the complexity of doing so and the overall time to resolution,” the spokesperson said.
It enables GetSwift to recover its costs for the numerous hearings which have revolved around whether there should be multiple proceedings, the spokesperson continued, and which party, if there is only one proceeding, should have carriage of it.
“We think it is sensible for the courts to consider a procedure to avoid a multiplicity of duplicative class actions and all the wasted costs this imposes on the parties, especially the defendant.”
“Here, in circumstances where Webb (the last proceeding to be commenced against GetSwift) has been given carriage of this matter, it may be seen as illustrative of the court’s disposition towards multiplicity actions, namely, discouraging a race to the court.”
