Storm lawsuits may be heard together

A Federal Court judge will consider whether it is desirable to hear all legal actions against banks over managed investment schemes run by Storm Financial in the same court.
Storm Financial went into administration in January 2009 and was placed in liquidation in March that year owing $3.6 billion to an estimated 14,000 investors, many of whom were small investors.
Lawyer Stewart Levitt, representing clients in a class action against the Macquarie Bank on behalf of investors in the failed company Storm Financial, said it would mean "they're all heard in the same place by the same judge".
"At the moment they're scattered in Sydney in Brisbane, but there's some suggestion they might all be moved up to Brisbane," Mr Levitt said.
He said 200 former clients of Storm Financial attended a meeting in Brisbane on Friday.
Mr Levitt said a Federal Court decision delivered on January 18 in the case of Leveraged Equities Ltd v Goodridge bodes well for former clients of Storm Financial.
A trial judge had upheld Mr Goodridge's claim that Leveraged Equities had not made a valid margin call on Mr Goodridge and were not entitled to sell all of the securities in his margin lending account.
On appeal, the full bench of the Federal Court reversed that decision, but Mr Levitt said Storm clients had fundamentally different relationships with the banks.
"It was actually a favourable decision because their individual histories are quite different from the position of Ross Goodridge," he said.
He said the decision in Goodridge was based on his "individual, personal relationship" with his finance institution.
"The relationship between the banks and Storm was something that virtually cut the investors out of the whole equation," Mr Levitt said.
"They didn't have personal relationships with the banks, whereas Goodridge did."
The matter of consolidating the cases will next be considered on April 8, Mr Levitt said.
In December, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) said it had also lodged court action against the Commonwealth Bank, Bank of Queensland Ltd and Macquarie Group Ltd to seek compensation for investors who suffered losses in the collapse of Storm.