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A new investigation has reconstructed how Woodville Consultants, the Welsh litigation funder that collapsed into administration in July 2026, raised in excess of £300m from individual investors to bankroll law firms pursuing car finance commission claims.

As reported by Car Dealer Magazine, drawing on an investigation by The Times, Woodville continued raising money through unregulated loan notes after the Financial Conduct Authority asked the business in 2022 to cease financial promotions relating to investments or loans. In that same year the regulator placed Integrity Protect No 1 — a company run by directors Ann Marie Bell and Peter Legge — under restrictions over its handling of loan notes, citing evidence of borrowing funds via loan notes using Woodville's bank account.

The fundraising reached well beyond the UK, with the operation expanding to target investors in South America, Europe and Africa. It drew on sales networks connected to failed investment schemes, including the 79th Group, which is the subject of a City of London Police fraud investigation. Promoters are reported to have earned commissions of 10% to 15%, which some investors say were never disclosed to them.

Robert Goodhew of Kroll, appointed as administrator, said: "Based on the information currently available to us, we believe that more than £300 million has been raised from investors." Administrators are now examining how assets were distributed, whether the underlying legal claims were viable, payments made to third parties, and whether the business model was sustainable at all. The case has become the sharpest example yet of the risks created when consumer claims funding is financed from the retail investment market rather than institutional capital.

The law firm at the centre of the largest group claim in English legal history is being sued by one of its own funders, in a dispute that turns on how litigation proceeds are routed once they reach a firm's client account.

As reported by City AM, Brazilian financial services firm Vinci SPS Capital Gestão de Recursos Ltda has issued High Court proceedings against Pogust Goodhead, seeking £84m plus roughly £600,000 in legal costs arising from pre-action correspondence and an earlier injunction application. Vinci SPS originally advanced 90.09m Brazilian Reais, or about £12.8m, to the firm.

The claim centres on an interim costs payment of £42.7m that landed in Pogust Goodhead's client account. Vinci SPS alleges the firm breached its obligations by agreeing to disburse litigation proceeds to barristers and after-the-event insurers without lender consent, and by failing to move the £42.7m into a designated receivables account — an account the funder says took more than four and a half years to open. Pogust Goodhead's position is that it cannot transfer the money until it invoices its claimants, and cannot invoice until it discharges a trust operating in favour of its ATE insurers. Vinci SPS contends its own rights take priority. Fieldfisher acts for the funder; DAC Beachcroft is defending the firm.

The proceedings arrive against a heavily financed backdrop. Gramercy Funds Management, a separate funder, signed a $552.5m facility with Pogust Goodhead in October 2023 and added a further $150m in June 2026. The firm was also sued by Seladore Legal for £2.2m in May 2025. Its flagship matter remains the BHP litigation over the 2015 Brazilian dam disaster that killed 19 people, in which the High Court found BHP liable in November 2025. The next phase of that trial, dealing with causation and loss, begins in April 2027.

A new academic study of more than 74,000 US jury verdicts and settlements has found that civil liability costs are rising faster than general inflation — and that the effect is stronger in states that do not regulate third-party litigation funding.

As reported by The Morning Call, the research was conducted by academics at Georgia State University together with Brighthouse Financial, covering verdicts and settlements nationwide from 2009 through 2024. The study attributes the bulk of the increase to rapidly growing jury awards rather than to case mix, finding that plaintiffs are winning a larger share of the cases that reach trial, that fewer cases are settling before trial, and that verdicts have climbed even after controlling for the types of claims being heard. The pattern holds across the range of case values rather than being driven solely by headline nuclear verdicts.

The op-ed, written by Curt Schroder, executive director of the Pennsylvania Coalition for Civil Justice Reform, uses the findings to argue against Pennsylvania House Bill 1913, which would allow attorneys to suggest specific damages figures during closing arguments. Schroder contends that Pennsylvania currently has no consumer protections governing third-party litigation funding, and points to the study's finding of stronger social inflation in unregulated states.

He cites Philadelphia data as illustrative: the city recorded 12 verdicts of at least $10 million in 2024, more than in any year going back to at least 2017, with the median damages award reaching $192,664 — nearly twice the previous high of $100,000.

Two months after North Carolina became the first US state to ban commercial litigation funding outright, the nationwide wave of copycat prohibitions that some predicted has not arrived, according to a new industry analysis.

As reported by Carrier Management, the 22 June ban marked a turning point in what the publication describes as a decade-long contest between the third-party litigation funding sector and the commercial insurance industry. The measure was a significant win for insurers and corporate defendants. But the analysis cautions against reading it as the beginning of the end for the funding model, noting that the plaintiffs' bar is already shifting toward private equity structures to keep cases financed.

While some legal and business publications framed the North Carolina statute as the start of a nationwide domino effect, that momentum has failed to materialise. Instead, the piece finds that most states are choosing to build guardrails rather than insurmountable walls. Recent statutes have focused on mandatory transparency requirements, prohibitions on funder control over litigation strategy, and caps on investor payouts.

The scale of that regulatory activity is substantial even without outright prohibition. Citing data compiled by the US Chamber of Commerce, the analysis reports that 20 states have now enacted laws regulating the litigation funding industry, including 13 states that passed restrictions within the last two years alone. None of those states pursued a full ban.

The takeaway for funders is that the dominant legislative trend remains disclosure and conduct regulation rather than exclusion — a materially different operating environment from the one North Carolina has created.

A former Republican member of Congress is calling on the White House to use existing Treasury authority to force third-party litigation funders to identify who is behind the money they deploy in US courts.

As reported by the Washington Examiner, former Mississippi Representative Gregg Harper describes third-party litigation funding as "a quiet but corrosive practice that has grown into a multibillion-dollar industry," and argues that the practice allows undisclosed backers to shape American litigation without accountability.

Harper sets out a specific regulatory pathway rather than a legislative one. He proposes an executive order directing the Treasury Department, within 90 days, to issue a rule through the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network under the Corporate Transparency Act that would treat litigation funders as entities required to report their beneficial owners, reversing earlier narrowing of that rule's scope. He further suggests Treasury and the IRS propose rules requiring funders — including lenders who underwrite litigation — to file public reports identifying the case, the parties, the underlying investors and the amounts committed. As a third step, he urges Treasury to examine designating litigation funders under the Bank Secrecy Act, which would trigger know-your-customer obligations.

The piece points to several examples he says illustrate the disclosure gap, including reporting that Reid Hoffman helped fund the E. Jean Carroll case against President Trump through a nonprofit intermediary, and philanthropic funding of attorneys embedded in state attorney general offices beginning in 2017.

Harper argues that persistent litigation delays infrastructure, data center and defense projects, and closes by framing the issue as one that "should be bipartisan."

The directors of collapsed UK car-finance claims funder Woodville were soliciting fresh investor money through a newly incorporated vehicle less than a month before the business entered administration, according to a new report that traces the final weeks of the group.

As reported by the Law Society Gazette, Woodville directors Ann Marie Bell and Peter James Legge appeared in a 17 June webinar titled "Unlock the Power of Litigation Finance," inviting investment in "Kairos Digital Loan Notes" offering a 15% return over 12 months. Woodville went into administration on 16 July. Kairos Litigation Limited had been incorporated only in February 2026, with its business described as the administration of financial markets. Bell used the session to invite investment in a €50m "fixed yield" fund tied to the FCA's motor finance redress scheme, stating that Kairos "is not dependent on the outcome of claims to make monthly interest payments." The FCA strongly discourages the use of solicitors or claims management companies in that redress process.

Bell and Legge are also directors of litigation funder Horizon Legal Group, which shares a Pontypridd address with Woodville and had administrators appointed on 2 July following High Court proceedings. The webinar was hosted by Luxembourg-based Black Manta Capital Partners, whose chief executive Alexander Rapatz warned of "significant risks."

Insolvency specialist Paul Muscutt of Crowell & Moring, acting on the Woodville administration, described the consumer litigation funding market as "fundamentally flawed," adding: "I'm a big fan of litigation funding — when done properly." He argued that a law firm's share of settlements worth a few hundred pounds cannot cover finance costs, and called on the SRA to step up scrutiny.

An investigation into the funding dispute behind South Africa's long-running "Please Call Me" litigation has detailed a series of adverse findings against the insolvency practitioner who has controlled one of the entities claiming a share of the payout.

As reported by ITWeb, Raining Men — the company that in 2015 pursued a 40% share of any winnings from Nkosana Makate's claim against Vodacom — has been in business rescue since January 2019 and remains there. Thomas Samons, appointed its business rescue practitioner on January 21, 2019, has been criticized in three separate forums.

Arbitrator Andrew Mabena, who ruled in 2020 that Raining Men held no claim to a share of Makate's winnings, levied punitive costs and described as "shocking" the reliance Samons and two funders placed on what he found to be a fraudulent transfer of rights from Black Rock to Raining Men, saying they had "perpetuated" a "disregard for ethical and responsible litigation."

Separately, Pretoria High Court Judge Harshila Kooverjie removed Samons as business rescue practitioner of three North West state-owned entities for incompetence, and a December 2025 judgment dismissed his attempt to overturn that decision. The Companies and Intellectual Property Commission suspended his licence in February 2025, though he successfully challenged the suspension and remains licensed.

The funding chain traces to 2011, when Chris Schoeman — a disbarred advocate — signed the first funding deal with Makate. Black Rock was confirmed as the named funding party in 2013. Errol Elsdon, a Raining Men director, is now suing Makate for a share of his undisclosed Vodacom settlement on the basis of funding provided. Samons did not respond to ITWeb's requests for comment.