Litigation
Cal. Litig. 2023, Volume 35, Issue 3
Content
- California's Commitment To Wage Transparency Comes At a Cost To Employers
- Confessions From An Electronic Platform 2022: Appellate Argument
- Don't Let Your Client's Bequest Be a Lawsuit
- Editor's Foreword
- Fraud As Hyperreality
- From the Section Chair
- Governmental Entity Litigation: the Mirror Dimension
- New Federal Legislation Raises Dueling Experts: What Olean Might Mean For the Future of Class Certification In the Ninth Circuit
- PAST SECTION CHAIRS & EDITORS-IN-CHIEF
- Q & A WITH JUDGE VINCE CHHABRIA OF THE NORTHERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA
- SECTION OFFICERS & EDITORIAL BOARD
- Smashing Statues: the Rise and Fall of America's Public Monuments
- Table of Contents
- The California Supreme Court In Judicial Year 2021-2022: Emerging From the Pandemic
- The Hastings College of the Law Name Change: the Real Deal About the Bad and the Ugly
- The Supreme Court's Five Arbitration Decisions
- Working: Conversations With Essential Workers
- Disclosure of Litigation Funding Arrangements: Much Ado About Nothing
DISCLOSURE OF LITIGATION FUNDING ARRANGEMENTS: MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING
Written by Matthew D. Harrison & Doug D. Geyser*
Commercial litigation finance has experienced a meteoric rise in the United States legal industry over the past decade. Yet it remains a fairly novel innovation in a field historically governed by tradition and precedent. It serves a panoply of legal risk-management purposes across law firms and companies of all sizes. In one typical scenario, the funder provides nonrecourse capital to support a litigant’s claims or defenses. The funder recoups its investment and a return only if the case resolves favorably.
Funding inquiries have become almost routine by those seeking to ameliorate the uncertainty and expense associated with complex litigation. As with any innovation that rattles the foundations of a deep-rooted institution, the litigation finance industry has its detractors. A handful of heavily bankrolled lobbyists, most notably the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, have made it a central goal to extinguish or limit the industry’s reach in the U.S. After onerous initial proposals gained no traction, industry opponents have focused their energy on the margins â namely, the call for blanket rules requiring the automatic disclosure of these arrangements in every civil case.
The parameters of the disclosure debate have been thoroughly documented elsewhere. This piece does not rehash them. Rather, it focuses on how these efforts have played out, and what lawyers should consider when advising clients about the current landscape.