Can and Should the New Third-Party Litigation Financing Come to Class Actions?

• Published in: Theoretical inquiries in law 2018-02, Vol.19 (1), p.109-123
• Main Author: Fitzpatrick, Brian T.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Class action lawsuits; Federal court decisions; Risk; Settlements & damages; Social investing; State court decisions; Third party
• ISSN: 1565-1509; 1565-3404
• DOI: 10.1515/til-2018-0004

In the United States, there has been tremendous growth in a form of third-party litigation financing where investors buy pieces of lawsuits from plaintiffs. Many scholars believe that this new financing helps to balance the risk tolerance of plaintiffs and defendants and thereby facilitates the resolution of litigation in a way that more closely tracks the goals of the substantive law. In this Article, I ask whether these risk-balancing virtues of claim investing carry over into class action cases. This is a question that has not yet been addressed by scholars because many think it is not possible for financiers to buy pieces of class action lawsuits in the United States. But I show that such investments are neither impractical nor unethical; indeed, it appears that they are already here. It is therefore worth considering whether the investments confer the same social benefits they do in other cases. I argue that although class members do not need a risk transfer device in class action cases because they are almost always risk-neutral in light of their small losses, their lawyers do need such a device. Although this does not necessarily mean that claim investing is socially desirable overall in class actions, the social costs that have thus far been identified with claim investing seem modest compared to the benefits.