Data breach class action lawsuits are already well-established in the United States, but are only developing elsewhere. In the following guest post, Stephen Reilly and Andrew Jones of Beale & Company Solicitors take a look at the possibilities and prospects for data breach class actions in the U.K. A version of this article previously was published as a Beale & Company client alert. I would like to thank Stephen and Andrew for allowing me to publish their article as a guest post on this site. I welcome guest post submissions from responsible authors on topics of interest to this blog’s readers. Please contact me directly if you would like to submit a guest post. Here is Stephen and Andrew’s guest post.
Continue Reading Guest Post: Data Breach Class Actions in the UK — What Next?
The highest-profile attempt to utilize the new U.K. regime for consumer class actions has come to a grinding halt. The case involved a claim alleging that MasterCard’s fee structure had resulted in overcharges to tens of millions of U.K. consumers. On July 21, 2017, the Competition Appeal Tribunal, newly re-organized to oversee the consumer class action regime, declined to grant the necessary collective proceedings order that would have allowed the action to go forward. The tribunal’s ruling is highly fact-specific and its decision to decline the collective proceedings order very much reflects the specific features of the claims against MasterCard, but the ruling nevertheless does raise concerns about the viability of the class action regime and its attractiveness to prospective claimants in other cases. A copy of the Tribunal’s July 21, 2017 order can be found 
In prior posts (for example, 
There have been few more powerful forces acting recently on the litigation environment around the world than third-party litigation financing. The recent rise of litigation funding, often accompanied by the active involvement of U.S. law firms, is changing the face of litigation in numerous countries. The collective action to be filed against MasterCard later this summer in the U.K. by U.S. law firm Quinn Emanuel, in an initiative being financed by Chicago-based litigation funding firm Gerchen Keller Capital LLC, is the latest and highest profile example of this trends. Indeed, the anticipated MasterCard action in some ways reflects the coming together of many of the important global litigation trends, as discussed below. The Quinn Emanuel law firm’s July 2016 press release about the planned lawsuit can be found 
The 
Is collective action litigation in the U.K. about to get a significant boost? That is the question many are asking as the new collective action regime introduced by the 
In a May 13, 2013 order (
Although the class action lawsuit is most often associated with the litigious legal culture in the United States, the fact is that in recent years class action and other group litigation procedures have been expanding around the world. Forces of globalization and the rise of organized groups of aggrieved claimants have encourage a host of
There is no question that the 
Among the many consequences of an increasingly global economy is that investor interest in pursuing claims for securities wrongdoing has become a more nearly universal phenomenon. While collective-style lawsuits largely had been restricted to claims in U.S. courts under U.S. law, a growing list of countries are adopting at least some elements of U.S.-style securities