Litigation Funding Eating Into Compensation Claims: Report

The rules around class action lawsuits need to change, according to a review by the Samuel Griffith Society. The Society says much of the $1 billion in settlement funds paid in the 2019/20 financial year went to private underwriters and law firms. The Society was established in 1992 and focuses on researching constitutional issues. The authors, Xavier Boffa and Henry Davis, said litigation funding—where a specialised finance company effectively gambles on plaintiffs winning a case by paying for the legal fees and other costs—was developed to ensure that a lack of money would be no barrier to justice for potential plaintiffs. But now the “scales have tipped far too far in favour of the interests of litigation funders and, potentially, plaintiff law firms,” the report says....