New laws passed by State Parliament give Western Australians the workable mechanism for bringing ‘Class Actions’ in the State’s courts.
The Civil Procedure (Representative Proceedings) Bill introduces a legislative class actions scheme.
Attorney General, John Quigley said class actions served an important role in providing access to justice by allowing people who had suffered a mass civil wrong to group their claims together and seek compensation.
“The legislative class action procedure assists the plaintiff group and the defendant to resolve their dispute efficiently, thereby reducing the cost of the litigation for the parties and the court,” Mr Quigley said.
“While a mechanism for bringing a class action to the Supreme Court exists, the Law Reform Commission of Western Australia found it to be outdated, inherently uncertain, and silent on many procedural aspects of representative proceedings.”
He said the new regime would give access to the courts to those in the community who had been effectively denied justice because of the cost of beginning a legal action.
“A similar regime was substantially adopted in Victoria in 2000, NSW in 2011, Queensland in 2017, and Tasmania in 2019, and has stood the test of time,” Mr Quigley said.
“Without a strong and sustainable mechanism for bringing class actions, countless individuals will not see justice and their losses will go uncompensated.”
He said the new regime would not only enhance access to justice by reducing the cost of court proceedings to the individual and improve the individual’s ability to access legal remedies, it would enable court resources to be used more efficiently.
