Corporate & Securities Law

Lovells dispute lawyers focus on class actions

By Werner R. Kranenburg

City firm Lovells LLP announced on Monday that it has formed a dedicated group of dispute resolution lawyers to focus on class actions. Most of the members of the new group are located across the firm’s European offices.

London-based dispute resolution partner Neil Mirchandani, leader of the group, states the following in the press release:

The formation of the Class Actions Unit comes at a time when a number of continental European jurisdictions have implemented or are considering legislation to introduce new group litigation procedures. The Class Actions Unit offers a coordinated cross-jurisdiction and practice area team able to provide experienced strategic and technical legal advice wherever and whenever an issue arises.

WV&Z asked him to elaborate on that statement, in particular which limited areas of law in which specific jurisdictions the firm expects will feature most prominently in terms of work for the firm and the industry in general in the short term. His response:

The areas we expect to experience most group litigation activity in the short term are antitrust, product liability and shareholder disputes. It is harder to say which jurisdictions but there may possibly be increased activity in Germany following the Kapmug legislation; Holland if the procedures used in the recent Shell case are accepted more broadly; and the UK following on from proposals for private enforcement in competition cases and the influx of US claimant firms.

In addition to these developments, the press release also refers to the recent increase in interest in litigation funding and the coming into force (in just a few days now) of the Companies Act’s derivative claim provisions in general. (Please use the Search function on the right to find previous WV&Z posts on these topics, for example on Shell.)

See Lovells’ Publications section for the archive of its periodical Class Actions Bulletin and a perspective of class action law in five European countries.

What’s more: ‘KapMuG’ is the German statute on class actions. The abbreviation stands for ‘Kapitalanleger-Musterverfahrensgesetz’ or, in full, ‘Gesetz über Musterverfahren in kapitalmarktrechtlichen Streitigkeiten’ which loosely translates to ‘Statute governing representative legal actions on the grounds of capital markets disputes’. For the official text of the Act, see the Bundesministerium der Justiz’ KapMuG entry, in German.

Full post as published by With Vigour and Zeal on September 25, 2007 (boomark / email).