Litigation/Dispute Resolution

Barristers who win cases on behalf of causes they back should avoid making “supportive” comments or risk undermining their independence, the vice-chair of the Bar Council has warned.

The “explosive growth” of litigation funding is behind an increase in class actions across Europe over the past two years, a report by the law firm CMS has argued.

The Court of Appeal yesterday highlighted the importance of judicial control over costs to ensure that the involvement of third-party litigation funders does not create perverse incentives.

Judges are using Wikipedia to research legal issues and allowing it to influence their reasoning, ground-breaking research has discovered.

The Ministry of Justice’s “future ambition” is to extend compulsory mediation from small claims to all county court users and so it has begun considering its role in overseeing the mediation sector.

A lord justice of appeal who became “unjustifiably antagonised” by a defendant’s “persistence” in challenging his decisions should have recused himself, the Court of Appeal has ruled.

Mediation will be made compulsory for all small claims worth up to £10,000, potentially settling 20,000 cases that would otherwise end up in court, the Ministry of Justice proposed today.

The rules on witness statements should not be seen as encouragement to identify “as many instances of non-compliance as possible for use in trench warfare”, the High Court has said.

The Ministry of Justice has suggested that people defending themselves from strategic lawsuits against public participation (SLAPPs) could be protected by a £5,000 costs cap.

Class action specialist PGMBM has secured funding of £100m from alternative investments firm North Wall Capital, in what is believed to be the largest deal of its kind with a claimant law firm.

The ESG – environment, social and governance – agenda will be the key driver of growth in litigation funding in the UK and continental Europe in the coming years, new research has predicted.

Group actions will no longer be the preserve of a few large claimant firms, according to the founders of an online platform whose development was supported by the SRA’s Legal Access Challenge.

The High Court has struck out “inherently fanciful” allegations made by a former City partner against, among others, another former City partner, a law firm and a QC.

A Court of Appeal ruling that the wording of a settlement of a personal injury claim supplanted fixed costs could have “significant” implications, including for cases that have already settled.

The Court of Appeal has reinstated a £5bn claim that a High Court judge struck out because it risked becoming “the largest white elephant in the history of group actions”.