NOT A CLASS ACT: THE SLOW DEVELOPMENT OF GROUP LITIGATION IN THE ENGLISH COURTS
The emergence of formal class action procedures in England and Wales following Lord Woolf’s 1996 Access to Justice Report have been well-documented. However, despite being widely anticipated in the 1990s as a revolutionising force in the legal sector, class actions have remained remarkably rare in English litigation, and the recent rejection by the High Court of a class action by Lloyds shareholders in connection with the disastrous acquisition of HBOS has done little to encourage group litigation in the English courts. This article will consider the reasons for the continued scarcity of class actions in England and Wales and consider which sectors are best placed to utilise the available procedures in the future.
At present, there are three types of class actions available in England and Wales, none of which appear to have been used frequently since their introduction. The rules for Group Litigation Orders (GLOs) are set out in the Civil Procedure Rules Part 19 (CPR 19) and provide a means of joining together claims which have a cause of action raising common or related issues of fact or law, but have only been used 103 times since 2000, and only eight times since 2016. Similarly underused is the mechanism for representative actions, which is also included in CPR19, under which a representative may bring or defend an action on behalf of others who have the same interest. Class action claims brought before the Competition Authority Tribunal (CAT) have been the most neglected, with only three ‘opt-out’ collective action competition claims being brought since that procedure was introduced in 2015.
Jan-Mar 2020 issue
Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP