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Three days ago @apshamilton posted that we had received notification that the court in Australia had reached a decision following the hearing of Meta and Google's interlocutory applications..
Broadly speaking these two mega corporations had tried to stop our case, not because of the underlying laws we say they broke, but because Andrew can't be trusted to act on behalf of all of the class members. That's you people here on Hive and many others who were hurt ever since in 2018.
24 Hours
We only get 24 hours notice of these kinds of things and as such in the middle of the night for Andrew (and in the evening for me in Mexico at HiveFest) we tuned in.
Orders
Permanent Stay
I won't sugar coat it: the Judge closed the case. You can read the orders here on the court site - direct link to pdf here.
I won't speculate on what happens next but I just want to publicly offer my support to @apshamilton in whatever he is able to do next on this (and you're welcome to do so in the comments too).
The Judgement has some language which puts certain conditions on the way Andrew has to communicate this result to class members. I'm not directly bound by that but I'm also not a lawyer and because of the time difference to Israel and the Sukkoth holiday which started the day of the judgement, I've not spoken to Andrew as much as I'd like.
Costs
The court has also ordered Andrew to pay the legal costs of Meta and Google but this is subject to some discussion that has to occur in the next 5 days. This will be incredibly harsh especially as, for over two years, Andrew made it clear that he had applied for an exemption from paying the other side's costs through a special law specifically designed for these types of cases.
I can't tell you what will happen around this, I'm waiting to see what gets put forward to the court over the next week.
Conditions
7 . The applicant is to give notice to Group Members and SUFB Token Holders of the orders which I have made in determining the present applications and provide a link to the reasons for judgment when published on the Court’s website.
8 . The form in, and means by, which the notice in Order 7 is to be given are to be agreed by the parties and a proposed short minute of order in relation thereto is to be provided to my Associate within 5 business days of these orders, with any areas of disagreement to be indicated in mark up.
I can't properly explain this!
Full Judgement
There is a much longer document explaining her full reasoning. Whilst I have access to that document because I'm on email chains with the court and subscribed to the court system, I note that it isn't available publicly. I'm going to share it anyway but I will warn you that the areas which are problematic for us, concern a fairly technical legal analysis of Andrew's responsibilities to class members and others and past cases (none of which are very similar to this case).
Additionally the court is quite concerned that Andrew, in return for the enormous personal risk he is taking and the huge amount of work he is doing, holds a significant share in the 25% of any damages that might one day be awarded.
As if ordering him to pay the costs of Meta and Google doesn't prove that he is personally putting himself on the line for all the class members, I for one wouldn't resent a single cent he earned doing this! Feel free to state your opinion on Andrew's potential compensation in the comments!
What's Next?
Knowing @apshamilton I know enough to say I don't know exactly what happens next and he probably can't tell us all yet. So please don't think he's ignoring us, he is genuinely constrained in what he can say and do right now by the court and under significant time pressure with Jewish holidays in Israel.
I'm posting this from the gate at Tijuana Airport in Mexico waiting for the first of my 3 flights back to Israel from the amazing HiveFest. So I better hit publish before they call the flight!
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