Funding

There is strong growth in the consideration and use of litigation finance in the UK, new research has found, with 63% of respondents saying their organisation’s use of it has increased in the last two years.

The High Court has struck out a law firm’s amended particulars of claim for an indemnity from a QC if the firm was successfully sued by claimants who took part in failed group litigation. Failure to produce new particulars would inevitably lead to the part 20 claim failing.

Top third-party funder Burford Capital has earmarked $50m (£38m) to finance cases led by women lawyers as part of a groundbreaking initiative designed to help close the gender gap in law by providing an “economic incentive for change”.

Lawyers and litigation funders would “by a considerable margin” be the main beneficiaries of any award in a representative action against Google over misuse of private data, the High Court has ruled in blocking the case going forward.

Burford Capital, the world’s largest litigation funder, has raised a further £193m ($250m) in less than 24 hours after an oversubscribed placing. The new shares were placed at 1850p, reflecting the extraordinary growth in the AIM-listed company’s share price.

The former chief executive of DAS UK was convicted of a 14-year-long fraud in a private prosecution brought by the company after it overturned a court decision to stay the case, it has emerged.

A solicitor who sought to keep a longstanding client happy at the expense of another, when one provided the other with a loan to pursue High Court litigation, has been struck off. His actions were “a classic example of a solicitor departing from the complete integrity, probity and trustworthiness expected”.

The Association of Personal Injury Lawyers has called for qualified one-way costs shifting to be extended beyond personal injury and the cap on damages-based agreements to be doubled to 50% for fast-track cases with fixed costs.