Third party

Membership of the Association of Litigation Funders is not enough reassurance that a funder will pay up in the face of a large liability for costs, the High Court has ruled.

Litigation funder Burford Capital made a record investment of $1.6bn (£1.2bn) in new cases last year, it said in a bullish trading update as it continues to work on clawing back its reputation.

Sir Rupert Jackson has called for international rules on the use of third-party funding in international arbitration, part of what he termed a wider global lex mercatoria.

The claimants in the truck cartel litigation have received the green light to move forward without delay to an assessment of the costs of a preliminary hearing given the two sides’ contrasting financial resources.

A shareholder action against Burford Capital has been discontinued as it heads for a second listing in the US, the litigation funder announced today.

A High Court ruling refusing to set aside £4.3m judgment in default in a suppressed sales case shows the strength of the litigation funding model used by Manolete Partners, it has been argued.

The High Court has ordered the wife and mother-in-law of a Kazakh businessman, the subject of a “very substantial fraud claim”, to pay the claimants’ costs bill of over £12m.

The market of clients using litigation finance through choice rather than necessity – especially companies looking to offload their liability for portfolios of cases – remains “almost entirely unaddressed”.

A firm of insolvency practitioners which contributed almost £500,000 to fund a liquidator and former company’s claim against its directors has been ordered to pay the same amount in third-party costs.

Manolete Partners, the litigation funder specialising in insolvency, has invested in more cases in the first six months of its current financial year than in the whole of the previous 12 months.