When Five Class Actions Collide Before Anyone Chooses a Lawyer

When five shareholder class actions were launched against AMP after the Banking Royal Commission, the courts faced a new kind of competition — not between plaintiffs and defendants, but between law firms and litigation funders. In Wigmans v AMP Ltd (2021), the High Court rejected the idea that the “first to file” should automatically lead. The decision reshaped Australia’s approach to class action multiplicity and clarified that only Parliament — not courts — can decide who gets to run a case.