COLLECTIVE ACTIONS: TIME FOR GOVERNMENT INTERVENTION?
Litigation in England and Wales is undergoing a quiet revolution. After a number of false starts, collective redress, through group and representative actions, is now becoming a significant feature of the disputes market. The opt-out regime of the Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT) has developed at pace in the last couple of years and the Civil Procedure Rule (CPR) 19.6 ‘representative action’ procedure has been the subject of much litigation, including before the Supreme Court.
In this article, we step back and assess where we are now, and where we might be going. Before doing so, it is worth taking a quick look back into recent history.
Calls for right of collective action
In 2008, the Civil Justice Council (CJC) recommended that the UK government introduce a generic collective action procedure. It did so on the basis that such a procedure would “introduce a more effective, efficient, economical and fair means of increasing access to justice for all, claimant and defendant alike whilst benefiting, through the economies and efficiency gains it brings, the proper administration of justice”.
The CJC recognised that the UK government might not wish to introduce such a procedure immediately, noting that “there is merit in introducing for a short period of time a discrete, rather than generic, collective action within the civil courts ahead of the scheduled introduction of the generic action”. The CJC proposed that collective actions arising from competition law breaches would be a sensible candidate for this.
Jan-Mar 2023 issue
Ashurst LLP