Mass claims

From a deterrence perspective, private enforcement of consumer law can be insufficient for several reasons. Individual consumers may find it too costly to start a lawsuit ('rational apathy') or they may not even know that an infringement has occurred ('information asymmetry'). If public enforcement is not available, or if the budget of public authorities is limited and used for other purposes, the problem of under-enforcement will persist. Collective actions may be able to mitigate these problems. If many consumers can join their claims, the costs per claim decrease so that the rational apathy problem might be overcome. If consumer associations have standing, they might be able to acquire better information regarding infringements than individual consumers are able to do. However, collective actions pose problems of their own. The leading plaintiff or the organisation issuing the collective action could try to advance its own interests, rather than furthering overall consumer interests. Moreover, a large-scale lawsuit might harm the reputation of the defendant and thus create the possibility of 'frivolous suits'. The paper discusses a number of possibilities to overcome these problems. Ultimately, private and public enforcement will need to co-exist, since collective actions are not a perfect instrument to achieve optimal deterrence.

Large-scale housing, land and property (HLP) restitution efforts for war-displaced populations face ongoing limitations in three key areas: legal frameworks, financing, and technology. These limitations have led to critical problems in managing population return, reconstruction and political and economic recovery; with particular concern on the emergence of exploitive agendas and social unrest. Ukraine's unfortunate war however presents the opportunity to examine significant advances in mitigating these limitations. Drawing on fieldwork in Ukraine and the author's experience in 23 war-affected countries, the article describes, 1) the socio-legal context and legislative timing of Ukraine's new Compensation Law; 2) the sources, monetization of HLP claims and remedies involved in financing restitution programmes; and 3) the restitution processing speed and social inclusion possible with Ukraine's approach to use of technology.

The implementation of the rights of victims under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court presents momentous challenges to the Court. Given the nature of the crimes fallng under the Court's jurisdiction, victims' reparation claims are often likely to number thousands, if not tens of thousands. Under the Statute, it is the Court's task to organize and determine the modalities of victims' participation in the reparation proceedings. The Court is well advised to closely examine the approaches and solutions developed by modern international and national mass claims programs that have faced similar challenges. The paper analyses in detail these challenges and outlines the options available to the Court.

The relationship between legal fees and damages is fundamental to the way litigation is funded in most countries. In jurisdictions where fee shifting is the norm, the means by which courts regulate recoverable costs (i.e., the plaintiff's fees), and the extent to which they are proportional to damages, is of central importance. This article explores a recent case study from the United Kingdom involving the introduction of procedural rules designed to build an explicit and transparent degree of proportionality into the determination of legal costs. In October 2003, the Department of Constitutional Affairs in England and Wales announced the introduction of the "Fixed Recoverable Costs Scheme for Low Value Road Traffic Accident Claims." This established a set of fixed costs that successful lawyers could recover from losing defendants in such cases. The Fixed Recoverable Costs Scheme was based closely on research undertaken by the authors for the Civil Justice Council and the current article describes the process that brought this about. In so doing, it provides an explicit example of empirical legal studies having a direct impact on policy. We were also asked to provide some basic evaluation of the scheme two years later and the article also shows how the scheme was operating, including some of the behavioral changes it apparently induced. We argue that some of these were predictable at the time the scheme was being designed and that the total experience allows us to consider ways the interaction between empirical legal studies and policy can be improved in the future.

Access to Justice Policy Directorate is responsible for developing and delivering policies in relation to all of Access to Justice Group's delivery bodies; the courts, coroners and tribunals, as well as legal aid and legal services. The key aim of the directorate is to review how the Department can provide early information to people with legal problems more effectively and guide them through the most appropriate options for resolving disputes.

La difficile quête de justice des "comfort women"  (esclaves sexuelles des armées du Japon en campagne avant 1945) devant les juridictions des Etats concernés (Japon, Corée du Sud, Philippines) et les juridictions étrangères au titre de la compétence universelle

Though China has experienced multiple and severe disasters since ancient times, its approaches to addressing mass claims issues through mediation by courts and grassroots entities is undergoing a process of reform and change. The selection of recent disasters, whether natural or human-induced, include the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome epidemic (‘the SARS Incident’), the earthquake that struck Wenchuan County, Sichuan Province in China in 2008 (‘the Wenchuan Earthquake’) and the Sanlu contaminated milk powder incident (‘the Sanlu Milk Contamination Incident’). The mass claims arising out of these disasters illustrate the continued preference for settling wide-scale claims outside of court. This settlement tendency alongside continued attention to strengthening the rule of law in China, naturally gives rise to questions regarding how such processes might simultaneously advance due process, transparency and avenues for appeal. Through examining China’s mediated response to disaster events experienced in recent years, this essay aims to provide a brief overview of China’s recent approaches to post-disaster governance, an evaluation of the country’s achievements to date, an analysis of challenges ahead and some suggestions for improving the existing approaches and mechanisms drawing on existing lessons learned.

The largest peacetime explosion in Europe occurred on 10 December 2005 at a major oil storage facility at Buncefield, north of London, when one of the tanks was mistakenly over-filled, causing a vapor cloud that exploded. The tank had two forms of control, both of which failed. Three principal legal consequences followed. Firstly, damage claims were made by the 3,379 individuals, seven local authorities and 754 businesses affected. Secondly, the government established a committee of inquiry to establish the causes of the incident, whether the public regulatory agencies had done their jobs, what lessons could be learned, and what changes should be made to the regulatory system and requirements on authorities and operators. Thirdly, the regulatory authorities' statutory investigations led to prosecutions, convictions and major fines on several operators and service companies. Although independent of each other, these three tracks proceeded largely in parallel and in practice interacted significantly with each other. This chapter does three things. First, it examines how the damage claims were processed through the courts. It finds the surprising result that, although the English courts have a mass claim procedure, the Group Litigation Order (GLO), judges declined to invoke that procedure as being unnecessary and instead processed different groups of domestic property and commercial damage cases by relying on the English courts' inherent case management powers. Those powers gave sufficient flexibility for judges and lawyers to make procedural management decisions, albeit within the framework of the Civil Procedure Rules, which importantly require parties and lawyers to seek to resolve issues by negotiated settlement. As a result, the vast majority of claims were agreed by parties bilaterally, and insurers and their lawyers played a major role in such resolutions. Further, managerial control was passed on to the most appropriate court at different stages, involving a series of four judges who each brought a high level of specialization so as to give authoritative management and determination, depending on the key issue to be resolved (first, general case management, then a matter of construction of a commercial contract, then property issues, and finally costs). Matters were disposed of effectively within five years.

Page 1. Scoping project on no win no fee agreements in England and Wales Richard Moorhead, Paul Fenn and Neil Rickman Ministry of Justice Research Series 17/09 December 2009 Page 2. Page 3. Scoping project on no win no fee agreements in England and Wales Richard Moorhead, Paul Fenn and Neil Rickman This information is also available on the Ministry of Justice website: www.justice.gov.uk/publications/research.htm Page 4.