Multi-party litigation and third-party funding of litigation

Globalisation has forged two significant developments in litigation: it has given rise to the phenomenon of mass harm claims arising from “defective products, environmental exposure to toxic chemicals [or mass] civil rights and human rights abuses”1 and it has placed a greater emphasis on multi-party litigation as a remedy for CSR-related claims. However, the typical methods of funding litigation, specifically, legal aid and contingency or conditional fee arrangements do not easily accommodate the growing interest in collective redress.2 A strict adherence to such funding structures may inadvertently privilege the legal claims of wealthy litigants compared to those of impecunious litigants. It follows that in order to hold corporations liable for damage, injury or abuse, we need to consider the issue of funding litigation and imagine new ways of financing cases.

Publisher

University of Galway

Rights

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

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Collections

School of Law (Scholarly Articles)