Class Actions: Getting Traction

Contributor: Laurence Winston

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Despite caution about creating a class action culture, recent case law has supported class or group actions as legal protections for consumers

In the United Kingdom, class or group actions have been relatively limited and very different from such actions in the United States. Recent case law has supported such actions as legal protec­tions for consumers, but this has been countered with caution about creating a class action culture, explains Laurence Winston, a partner in Crowell & Moring’s London office and co-head of the firm’s International Dispute Resolution Group.

Class actions generally fall into one of two categories: opt-in actions, which require claimants to actively join the lawsuit, and opt-out actions, in which one party can bring a claim for an entire class without having to gain the per­mission of, or even identify, individual members of that class, which naturally tends to lead to a much larger number of claimants in a case.

Read the complete article in the Litigation Forecast 2023. 

Index: Litigation Forecast 2023

• Cover Story – Class Actions—the Evolution Continues — April Ross and Jennifer Romano
• European Union – Evolving Landscape for Representative Actions — Werner Eyskens
• United Kingdom – Class Actions: Getting Traction — Laurence Winston
• Jurisdictional Analysis – Rightsizing the Federal Bench: More Judges Handling Fewer Cases — Justin Kingsolver
• Middle East/North Africa – A Pro-Arbitration Approach Changes the Dynamic — Randa Adra
• District of Columbia – Slow Flow in D.C. Courts — Toni Michelle Jackson
• Southern District of New York – Consumer Class Actions Expand into New Sectors — Sarah Gilbert
• Northern District of Illinois – Biometric Litigation Looms Large —Jason Stiehl
• Northern District of California – Will the Door to Mass Claims Close? —Christopher Banks
• Central District of California – A Faster Docket with Patent and Privacy Cases — Emily Kuwahara
• Patent Litigation Venues – Can an Infringement Claim Magnet Be Deactivated? — Yuezhong Feng

Litigation Forecast Archive:
2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018

Regulatory Forecast Archive: 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017