Keske, Sonja; Renda, Andrea; Van den Bergh, Roger --- "Financing and Group Litigation" [2010] ELECD 852; in Tuil, Mark; Visscher, Louis (eds), "New Trends in Financing Civil Litigation in Europe" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2010)

Book Title: New Trends in Financing Civil Litigation in Europe

Editor(s): Tuil, Mark; Visscher, Louis

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781848446854

Section: Chapter 4

Section Title: Financing and Group Litigation

Author(s): Keske, Sonja; Renda, Andrea; Van den Bergh, Roger

Number of pages: 35

Extract:

4. Financing and group litigation
Sonja Keske, Andrea Renda and
Roger Van den Bergh

1. INTRODUCTION

Group litigation is considered as having the potential to overcome the inef-
ficiencies of private law enforcement by individual actions for damages,
especially in cases where illegal conduct causes scattered damages for
numerous victims, where the damage suffered by each individual victim
may be small (Renda, Van den Bergh, Keske, Pardolesi et al. 2007, II.2.2).
This is particularly true in fields such as antitrust, products liability, pollu-
tion, retail financial services, health services, and so on. In these and other
fields, individual victims may lack information about law infringements
and even about the damage suffered; and even if they do have enough
information, they may still decide not to bring suit because of rational
apathy, the risk of free-riding and the fear of having to bear huge upfront
legal expenses (Renda, Van den Bergh, Keske, Pardolesi et al. 2007, II.2.2.
See also Chapter 2 by Visscher and Schepens in this book), which greatly
reduces the deterrence effect of actions for damages.
In group litigation, either an informed individual party or an association
steps forward and initiates a proceeding. In this way, possible information
deficiencies may be cured, the problems of rational apathy and free-riding
may be mitigated, and costs may be shared by a group of plaintiffs, thus
reaching economies of scale in litigation. For this reason, the need to
ensure the availability of collective redress for consumers ...