Bankwest customers hopeful of support for a class action
A UK entrepreneur is rallying resources for what may prove the most effective legal challenge yet regarding Commonwealth Bank's custody of Bankwest since 2008. Lawyer Roger Brown advised yesterday that Harbour Litigation Funding, from London, is considering investing in a class action. Brown, a management consultant with Australian origins, was an adviser in private practice working with major international insurance companies for 43 years until setting up MortgageDeception.com last year.This firm is coordinating legal claims on banks in the United Kingdom, Ireland, and New Zealand as well as Australia.Brown said he plans to share the identity of the law firm managing the case in three weeks time. Brown is collating supporters and case studies through the website MortgageDeception.comIf this case progresses beyond publicity to a trial it will reach a milestone so far beyond the three other networks seeking justice, in their eyes, for a wretched period of bank imposed hardship on tens of thousands of hapless business borrowers. Trevor Hall, of Parramatta legal firm Hall Partners is the driver of a second class action initiative now past the origination stage. Hall's action postulates a claim value well into the hundreds of millions of dollars range. ?This is small beer by the standards of the fantastic claim value contemplated by the Bankwest Class Action Group. Guy Goldrick, in an email to supporters late last week, put the claim value at $7 billion. A fourth effort connected to bankrupted customer Geoff Shannon and his Unhappy Banking coalition may have flagged. In 2013 Shannon said a wealthy international family was in the wings as funder but nothing further has been heard of this. Some of the research to support these claims has been done at public expense via a parliamentary committee over the past year. A report rushed out ahead of the recent Australian election provides more platitudes than rationale to support the notion that CBA owes any compensation. The alternative view, that there's money to be made from an epic legal case with a banking behemoth, looks to be now staking its flag via Brown and the adventurers at Harbour Litigation Funding.