Book Review: Cashman’s Class Action Law and Practice

• Author: Celeste Poltak
• Pages: 121-129

121

Cashman’s

Cl as s Acti on L aw

and Practice

Celeste Poltak*

The text Class Action Law and Practice1 provides a comprehensive over-

view of class actions practice in Australia from a procedural perspective,

while also grappling with a number of interesting and unresolved issues

facing class action counsel. The book is both instructive from a technical

perspective and engaging in terms of the policy questions it confronts.

Cashman focuses primarily on the class action procedures and

regimes available in the Federal Court of Australia and the Victorian

Supreme Court while also addressing the rules of various courts of the

states and territories in Australia that provide mechanisms for bringing

representative or group claims. The book begins with a review of the dif-

ferent types of group proceedings available, the history of class actions

generally, and some of the policy controversies that arise in connection

with class actions.

Cashman then provides a fulsome review of the representative action

rules in Australia. As the only statutory class action regimes in existence

are those applicable in the Federal Court and in the Victorian Supreme

Court, the text examines the rules of court in the balance of Australian

jurisdictions, which make provisions for representative actions. Those

rules are substantially the same in each court, but the author cautions

that in some cases it may be appropriate to rely on representative action

rules in addition to class action statutory provisions given that the stat-

utes largely arose out of what was perceived to be limitations on the util-

ity of representative rules of court. Similar to the holding in the Supreme

Court of Canada decision of Western Canadian Shopping Centres Inc. v.

Dutton,2 representative actions in Australia will generally be permitted to

* Celeste Poltak, LL.M., is an associate at Koskie Minsky LLP in Toronto and is a

member of the Bars of Alberta and Ontario.

1 Peter Cashman, Class Action Law and Practice (Annandale, Australia: The

Federation Press, 2007).

2 [2001] 2 S.C.R. 534 at para. 48.