Class actions represent an increasing area of risk for UK corporates, with increasing numbers of high-profile and highvalue group claims being brought, or threatened to be brought, in the English courts. The principal mechanism used to litigate these claims differs from the ‘opt-out’ class action familiar from the US, where claimants who fall within a defined class are automatically included unless they take steps to opt out. In contrast, claims in the English courts normally proceed on an ‘opt-in’ basis, with claimants issuing claims which are then managed together by the court under a Group Litigation Order (or GLO).
Damian Grave, Gregg Rowan and Maura McIntosh investigate how in-house lawyers can tackle the increasing threat of class actions in the English Courts
This article was first published in the Summer Edition of the In-House Lawyer magazine.
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