Settlement Approval
On 12 August 2024, the Supreme Court of New South Wales approved the settlement of the NSW Junior Doctors class action for $229.8 million (inclusive of legal and other costs). The Court was satisfied that the settlement is fair and reasonable and in the interests of group members.
The Court approved the proposed Settlement Scheme and appointed Maurice Blackburn as Scheme Administrator.
The Settlement Scheme sets out the settlement administration process, including how the settlement sum is to be distributed and the steps that need to happen before any money can be paid to group members.
Next Steps
If you have registered a claim in the class action, Maurice Blackburn will be in contact with you in the coming weeks to request you provide us with your Stafflink number and payroll information. Please note that if you do not have any payroll information, you can still participate in the settlement administration.
The Stafflink number and payroll information will be used to match with relevant data from the NSW Health payroll and rostering system. Given there are approximately 15,000 registrants participating in the class action and the length of the relevant period we need data for, this data extraction, collection and matching task is complex. We will be working closely with NSW Health during this period and we anticipate it will take approximately 6 months to complete.
Maurice Blackburn will communicate with you when we require you to take certain steps or provide us with information. There is nothing you need to do until we contact you.
At this stage, it is not possible to tell you if you will be eligible to receive compensation from the settlement. This will depend upon an assessment of your eligibility during the settlement administration.
Further, it is not possible to tell you how much you may receive by participating in the settlement. This will depend on how many registered group members are eligible and an estimate of each group members’ entitlements.
Registration has now closed
The deadline for group members to register was 12 July 2024. Eligible group members identified by NSW Health were sent a notice of the proposed settlement in accordance with orders of the Supreme Court of NSW dated 15 May 2024.
The orders of the Court required that group members must register a claim to participate in the class action settlement by 12 July 2024. Maurice Blackburn has no discretion to allow late registrations.
If you did not register a claim by 12 July 2024 you are unable to participate in the class action settlement.
Court documents
Copies of key documents in the class action are available on the NSW Supreme Court’s website.
Key documents
Frequently asked questions
Only group members who registered to participate by 12 July 2024 are eligible to participate in the settlement.
- You are a group member if you were:
- employed as a junior medical officer (an intern, resident, registrar, and/or senior registrar) by NSW Health at any time between 16 December 2014 and 21 March 2024;
- required, from time to time, to work more than your rostered ordinary hours; and
- not paid all your entitlements for that work
The Settlement Scheme was approved by the Supreme Court of NSW as part of the Settlement Approval orders made on 12 August 2924. The Settlement Scheme establishes a procedure for assessing the eligibility of participating group members and distributing the settlement sum, including the payment of final distribution amounts to participating group members.
The Settlement Scheme includes the Loss Assessment Formula which details how each participating group member’s entitlement to a share of the settlement sum will be calculated.
A copy of the Settlement Scheme can be viewed here.
We are aware that many group members have not kept records of the overtime they worked.
One of the principles underpinning the Settlement Scheme is to minimise, as far as possible, the information and documentation participating group members are required to provide. In accordance with the Settlement Scheme, determination of eligibility and loss assessment will in the first instance be based on data provided by NSW Health.
At the settlement approval hearing, Maurice Blackburn asked the Court to approve its legal costs which include fees for the work done by solicitors and disbursements (including fees for barristers, experts and court fees). The Court can only approve an amount of legal costs which it considered to be fair and reasonable, and in making that decision it took into account the opinion of an independent expert costs assessor.
The Court approved costs of $9,046,028.25 up to the settlement approval hearing on 12 August 2024. These costs were incurred over more than four years and include the costs of investigating and preparing the matter for trial, and numerous pre-trial hearings. The Court approved a further $7,467,988.58 million for settlement administration costs.
At the settlement approval hearing, the Court ordered that the reasonable legal costs of conducting the class action and the settlement administration be deducted from the settlement sum, before calculating each participating group member’s entitlement.
This means that, if you are eligible to participate as a group member in the distribution of the settlement sum, your share of the settlement will be calculated and paid to you after deduction of any legal costs.
By the registration deadline of 12 July 2024, approximately 15,900 group members had registered to participate in the settlement.
A class action is a legal action that is brought by one or more persons (the plaintiffs) on their own behalf and on behalf of a group of persons (group members) against another person or persons (defendant), where the plaintiffs and the group members all have similar claims against the defendant. The plaintiff in the NSW junior doctors class action is Dr Amireh Fakhouri.
The plaintiffs in a class action do not need to seek the consent of group members to commence a class action on their behalf, or to identify a specific group member or members. However, group members can cease to be group members by ‘opting out’ of the class action before a Court-imposed deadline. An explanation of how group members could opt out was contained in a previous notice to group members and the deadline for opting out has now passed.
In December 2020, Dr Amireh Fakhouri filed a class action against the NSW Ministry of Health and the State of NSW covering current and former junior medical officers who worked any time in the period 16 December 2014 and 21 March 2024. The class action sought to claim unpaid wages for rostered overtime, unrostered overtime, meal breaks, and superannuation.
Key dates
The Court ordered deadline for registrations has now expired.
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Australian leaders in class actions.
Our reputation for excellence in class actions is unparalleled, having recovered more than $4.3 billion for clients.
We are the only Australian class actions firm to deliver $100m+ settlements to clients in shareholder and listed securities actions, which we have done on ten occasions.
Lower cost to clients
Biggest recoveries
Most experienced
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