Southern Response Class Action Amended Statement of Claim Filed in High Court Today

A group of Southern Response policyholders who had their application for a representative action rejected by the High Court in February 2016, have today filed an Amended Statement of Claim in the same court.

Class action lawyer Grant Cameron advised that “the Amended Statement of Claim has been developed in consequence of the express invitation that Justice Mander provided in his Judgment in February when he said that his ruling was ‘without prejudice to any modified application based on a reformulation of the proposed proceeding which meets the concerns expressed in this judgment’”.

Mr Cameron explained that “At that time, Justice Mander felt there was insufficient clarity about the commonality of interests between members of the class to enable him to grant the application, however we are confident the fresh application meets that concern”.

“Over the past two months there has been an immense amount of work completed to bring together all the evidence of commonality of issues across all members of the class and we can now point to each specific document that evidences why particular class members are affected by specific issues.

Therefore, we are confident that the Court will see the high degree of commonality on the majority of issues and that periphery differences can be easily case-managed by the Court”.

He then confirmed that “the Statement of Claim itself has been amended and it now alleges that all policyholders in this action are a victim of an overarching strategy being maintained by Southern Response which is designed to minimise its fiscal exposure. It does this through a number of tactics and it is only through the means of a class action that the pattern of misconduct can be easily case managed by the Court."

“We anticipate that the true nature and scope of this company’s activities can now be laid before the Court, but the case raises immense questions around access to justice. Any citizen can file their own action in the Court but where citizens cannot afford to litigate against a major corporate or the Government, and they band together to share costs, there is no automatic right to enter the courtroom."

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