Sydney based lawyers Levitt Robinson is aggressively advertising plus approaching village resident committees to build a group of residents to take class actions against retirement village operators (see the ad above), and they are getting traction.

In today’s Sydney Morning Herald and Age highly respected journalist Adele Ferguson reported a meeting at an Aveo village in Melbourne (check the link HERE).

It is not clear if she attended the meeting but what is clear is the poorly informed emotion that Levitt Robinson is generating amongst residents.

An excerpt of Adele Ferguson’s article: “Stewart Levitt, a partner at Levitt Robinson, says he has looked at eight separate contracts from individual residents. He alleges misleading and deceptive conduct and says if enough residents are interested in taking action he will launch a class action that would be funded by a US-based litigation funder”.

The residents’ complaints highlighted in the article refer to standard village terms such as the DMF, which were part of the original contracts which the residents signed and would comply with the Act.

In the article Ferguson also writes “According to broking house Morgans, Aveo is on track to lift net profit a massive 57 per cent for 2016”. She doesn’t mention that Aveo is slowly building this return on investment from 4% a few years ago to 6% today and targeting 8% by 2018 with the help of a significantly enhanced development stream. This is not a business taking financial advantage of the elderly.

Even so, the Aveo contracts are no different from most other operators, and in many cases better. But Aveo would be an attractive target for litigant activity, being a healthy public company whose share price is susceptible to a knock. Interestingly, yesterday that share price topped $3.55, its highest ever and 17% above the $3.02 at the beginning of the year.

Who will be next for Levitt Robinson?