Maurice Blackburn

Key practice areas: Class Actions & Major Projects
Qualifications: LLB, BEc
Location: Sydney (NSW)

Ben Slade's expertise is in running complex litigation, including class or group actions, for the victims of corporate and other wrongdoing. He has extensive experience in advising and acting for:

• investors, businesses and consumers on corporations and trade practices issues
• victims of illegal cartels
• victims of misleading or deceptive conduct
• victims of faulty or defective medical devices
• victims of human rights abuses.

Some of Ben's significant class actions include:

• two product liability class actions for over 350 consumers who suffered physical and psychiatric injuries when their defective pacemakers had to be explanted
• a multi-million dollar class action for investors in a scam that mislead them into believing that they would own an interest in a vehicle tracking invention that did not yet exist
• a shareholder class action against the AWB over the oil-for-food kickback scandal. The case for over 1300 shareholders settled in March 2010 for $39.5m - the fourth largest settlement achieved to that date in a shareholder class action
• a class action against Amcor and Visy for over 1600 businesses claiming compensation for victims of Australia's largest price fixing cartel. This matter was settled in March 2011 for $95 million plus costs. This was the largest ever settlement of an Australian cartel class action.
• a class action against OZ Minerals for shareholders who lost millions when the company failed to disclose its crushing debt problems at the height of the GFC. This case was settled (subject to court approval) in May 2011 for $35.1m plus costs
• two current class actions that claim for compensation for hundreds of Australians who have faulty hip implants and defective knee implants manufactured by DePuy
• three current investor class actions against Nufarm, Gunns and Transpacific Industries
• a class action, conducted jointly with the Public Interest Advocacy Centre, against the NSW government that claims compensation for the false imprisonment of children in that state.

Ben has successfully concluded claims for hundreds of investors in managed investment schemes and unit trusts and actions that have returned funds to thousands of consumers for misleading conduct by banks and other financiers.

Ben worked for 10 years with Sydney's Redfern Legal Centre, he was on the Council of the Law Society of NSW between 1992 and 1995 and he was General Law Manager of Legal Aid NSW for six years before joining the Major Projects department of Maurice Blackburn in 2000. Ben is the Deputy Chair of the NSW Public Interest Advocacy Centre; the Co-chair of the Law Council's Class Actions Committee, Chair of the Law Council's Litigation Funding Working Group and is a core member of the Law Council's Federal Court Liaison Committee.