A rare legal pile-up hits the Victorian Supreme Court on Monday, with three major class actions starting simultaneously against Sportsbet, KPMG, Macquarie Capital and two other large corporates. The judge-only trials are scheduled to run for as long as eight weeks, creating an intense, drawn-out battle between heavyweight defendants and a claimant pool reportedly totalling about one million people.
Court watchers describe the concurrent hearings as unprecedented, turning a single day of listings into a showcase of large-scale litigation. The proceedings resemble a coordinated blitz rather than a routine court sitting.
Victoria’s top court has spent recent years reshaping its class action regime, and those reforms are now paying off in profile and volume. The Supreme Court has adopted procedural changes that plaintiff firms see as efficient, making it easier to run large, complex actions.
These settings have helped position Victoria as the preferred destination for funded group proceedings, even as other states look to mimic the model. Rival jurisdictions are closely tracking how the court manages three overlapping trials in the same registry.
Litigation funders and plaintiff firms are treating Monday’s hearings as proof that Victoria still offers the most attractive environment for class action work. The combined scale of claims against Sportsbet, KPMG and Macquarie Capital shows how institutional and corporate conduct can be tested in one forum under one set of rules.
Legal teams, expert witnesses and funders are all converging on Melbourne at once, turning the court precinct into a temporary hub for high-stakes commercial disputes. Funders say it reinforces the commercial logic of backing large group claims in a jurisdiction that moves them efficiently to trial.
