Source : BUSINESS NEWS
The state’s highest court has dismissed IG Markets’ bid against a Perth stock trader who reaped $5.5 million in 30 minutes on its trading platform.
IG Markets had been unsuccessful in its pursuit of trader Adam Tomasso, who earned millions of dollars through IG’s Test FX Up market.
After making the trades, IG Markets blocked Mr Tomasso’s account and reversed the transactions.
The Supreme Court of WA delivered a judgment in favour of Mr Tomasso last year, finding he was entitled to $5.5 million in damages.
IG Markets sought to change its defence and counterclaim against Mr Tomasso, but WA Supreme Court Justice Jenni Hill recently dismissed the application.
In a decision delivered last week, Justice Hill said the parties would need time to make more submissions to the court if IG Markets’ proposed changes were allowed.
“To allow this to occur would be inconsistent with the efficient use of judicial resources and the timely disposal of this case,” she said.
Justice Hill said IG Markets did not explain its delay in bringing the application to amend its defence and counterclaim.
“In my view, IG Markets has had a sufficient opportunity to address Mr Tomasso’s claim and prosecute its counterclaim, and it should not be entitled to now run the claim set out in its proposed amendment,” she said in her judgment.
“Fourth, and in any event, in failing to identify the mistake or how this relates to or concerns a fundamental term or subject matter of the contract, it is my view that the proposed amended pleading is in a form that ought [to] be struck out.”
Justice Hill said IG Markets should pay the costs of the application.
Mr Tomasso, a corporate development director at aged care group Hall & Prior, started an IG trading account in 2011, a previous court judgment shows.
He made highly profitable trades in a short span of time in an evening in April 2020, making transactions on a product called Test FX Up on the IG Markets platform.
IG Markets claimed it accidentally made the test market available to its clients for trading, and that the mistake should have been obvious.
According to the judgment, IG Markets argued Mr Tomasso’s transactions were void despite the stock trader denying he knew it was a test market.
Justice Hill dismissed IG Markets’ counterclaim in August, and again denying the company leave to amend its application in her latest judgment.
“In relation to the subsequent submission, it is important to emphasise that the transactions in question were formed by computerised trading systems and that it was IG Markets that accepted the offer of Mr Tomasso and not Mr Tomasso accepting IG Markets’ offer,” Justice Hill said.
“That is, once an offer was made by Mr Tomasso, based on a quote produced by IG Markets’ computerised trading system, it was accepted automatically by IG Markets’ computerised trading system without human intervention.
“On the application, IG Markets did not identify how the error relates to or concerned a fundamental term or subject matter of the contract or explain how the proposed amended pleading sets this out.
“In this case, the mistake complained of by IG Markets appears to be its assumption that its test markets were not available for trading on its platform and that, on this basis, it assumed the transactions did not relate to its test markets.”
In her judgment, Justice Hill said the mistake was about a fact or assumption on which IG’s algorithms accepted Mr Tomasso’s offer and entered into the transactions.
“Unless this fact or assumption formed part of the terms of each of these separate contracts, each of these transactions remained binding on IG Markets,” she said.
“The proposed amended pleading does not address these matters.”
Mr Tomasso was represented by boutique law firm Chew & Mathews while IG Markets engaged Mallesons as its legal counsel.
