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Austrian funder Padronus is financing three new German collective redress actions against Netflix, Apple TV and WOW, structuring its return just below the statutory ceiling that governs funder participation in the country's collective redress regime.

As reported by Digital Fernsehen, the Verbraucherschutzverein filed the three Abhilfeklagen on 15 September, two before the Kammergericht Berlin and one before the Bayerisches Oberstes Landesgericht. The claims allege that the providers raised subscription prices unilaterally on the basis of clauses that do not meet German standards for consumer contracts. Cited increases include WOW from €35.99 to €44.99, Apple TV+ from €4.99 to €9.99, and Netflix from €11.99 to €19.99.

The funding terms are the notable feature for the market. Padronus, operating through Vienna-based Prozessfinanzallianz GmbH, carries the entire cost risk and takes 9.9% of any proceeds, deliberately set beneath the 10% cap imposed on funder remuneration by the German legislation implementing the EU Representative Actions Directive. Where a participant holds legal expenses insurance that responds, Padronus waives its share altogether. Consumers pay nothing regardless of outcome.

Expected individual refunds run from roughly €200 to €700 per provider, and Padronus chief executive Richard Eibl has said a subscriber to all four services could recover close to €800. At the participation levels the funder is targeting, aggregate exposure would reach nine figures.

The German courts have not settled the question. The Kammergericht Berlin held comparable Netflix and Spotify clauses invalid in 2023, and the Bundesgerichtshof declined to disturb that outcome. But the Bayerisches Oberstes Landesgericht dismissed a parallel claim over Prime Video in July, and an appeal is pending.

The Competition Appeal Tribunal has approved the £260 million settlement of the opt-out collective action brought against Google on behalf of thousands of UK app developers, clearing the way for the largest distribution to class members the Tribunal has sanctioned since the UK's collective proceedings regime began in 2015.

Of the total, £160 million is earmarked for eligible developers, including sole traders and small businesses that sold apps or digital content through the Play Store from August 2018 onwards. The remaining £100 million covers the funding, insurance and legal costs of running the case. Individual payouts will be calculated on each developer's qualifying Play Store sales during the relevant period, and eligible businesses are being directed to the claim website to register ahead of the claims process opening.

As reported by City AM, the claim alleged that Google abused a dominant position by imposing unfair and excessive commissions on developers distributing through the Play Store. Google settled without any admission of liability or wrongdoing, saying it was pleased to reach agreement subject to court approval.

For the funding market, the approval resolves the question hanging over the case since August. Bench Walk Advisors financed the proceedings, and the professional parties agreed to forgo £34 million of their contractual entitlement, bringing their combined return down to the £100 million the Tribunal has now approved. The Tribunal's willingness to sanction a settlement of this size, with costs and funder returns disclosed and reduced in advance, gives funders a concrete benchmark for what the CAT will treat as just and reasonable.

Neil Purslow, Chairman of the Executive Committee of ILFA, said: “This landmark settlement vindicates the opt-out collective actions regime at an important moment for its future. Thanks to the regime and the litigation funders who underpin it, thousands of small businesses with no realistic alternative to take on a corporate wrongdoer will now be awarded compensation they could never have won on their own.”

“As the Government considers the future of the regime, this case is proof the system can deliver. This is a young regime that should be nurtured and expanded, not constrained, so more consumers and small businesses can hold powerful defendants to account.”

Burford Capital has set the terms on the refinancing it launched at the start of the week, pricing $300 million of senior secured notes at a coupon of 8.000% and locking in the cost of retiring its nearest maturity.

As reported by PR Newswire, the notes are due 2029 and will be issued by Burford Capital Global Finance LLC, an indirect wholly owned subsidiary. Burford Capital Limited is guaranteeing the paper, which is secured on a senior lien basis by substantially all of the issuer's assets and by the capital stock of certain subsidiaries, subject to exceptions.

The pricing carries a clear message about the funder's cost of capital. The 8.000% coupon on secured paper sits well above the 6.250% Burford is paying on the unsecured 2028 notes it is redeeming, and the company is putting up collateral to get there. Against that, the transaction takes $100 million of gross debt off the balance sheet, since net proceeds plus cash on hand will retire all $400 million of the 2028 notes.

The offering is expected to close on September 17, subject to customary conditions, with redemption of the 2028 notes to follow as soon as practicable afterwards.

The notes are being placed privately and have not been registered under the US Securities Act, with distribution limited to qualified institutional buyers under Rule 144A and to non-US persons under Regulation S, in each case also qualified purchasers under the Investment Company Act.

A Singapore ruling upholding a US$490.32 million arbitration award against Tata Power is drawing attention across the arbitration bar for what it says about how far arbitrators must go in disclosing their connections to third-party funders.

As reported by the Deccan Chronicle, the Singapore International Commercial Court on August 26 dismissed all three of Tata Power Company Limited's applications challenging the award, which was issued in favour of Kleros Capital Partners along with legal costs and interest. Kleros pursued the claim with litigation funding from Omni Bridgeway.

Tata Power argued that two members of the tribunal, Prof Lawrence Boo and Stuart Isaacs KC, should have disclosed their appointments in other arbitrations involving Omni Bridgeway-funded parties. It also pointed to Prof Boo's professional and personal association with Mark Hughes, a member of Omni Bridgeway's investment committee.

The court rejected the apparent bias allegations, holding that undisclosed appointments in unrelated matters did not establish bias and that where the circumstances did not give rise to apparent bias, there was no need to decide separately whether a disclosure obligation had been breached. It also declined to treat third-party funders as parties for disclosure purposes.

"How far should arbitrators be required to disclose professional relationships with parties, lawyers and third-party funders, particularly when litigation financiers have economic interests in the outcome?" asked finance expert Biswanth Pradhan, framing the wider question the case raises.

Tata Power has indicated it will appeal to the Singapore Court of Appeal.

One of the larger law firms working the UK motor finance claims market has cut its annual trading loss but is still running deep net liabilities, with its funding costs illustrating how expensive capital has become for volume consumer claims businesses.

As reported by the Law Gazette, Consumer Rights Solicitors Ltd this week filed accounts showing a pre-tax deficit of £6.8 million for the year to August 2025, down from £10.3 million the year before. Turnover rose from £450,000 to more than £3.5 million, largely on recovery of disbursements from cases taken on from other firms.

Net liabilities widened from £11.3 million to £18 million, with £40 million owed to creditors falling due after more than a year. The accounts disclose a £25 million loan facility secured in December 2025 from litigation funder Katch Fund Solutions at 24% annual interest, following a £9 million loan from the same lender on the same terms in October 2024.

The Manchester-based firm values its full claim book at £72 million as at the end of July, but contingent fee work cannot be carried as a balance sheet asset against those liabilities. Auditor Huw Nicholls of Armstrong Watson flagged that the losses, liabilities and outstanding loans indicate a "material uncertainty" over the firm's ability to continue as a going concern.

Director Kavon Hussain said the firm is broadening beyond its Plevin and motor finance book and pursuing group claims through a volume introducer. Motor finance claims remain stayed or slow-moving pending the Financial Conduct Authority's delayed redress scheme.

A coalition of more than 200 corporations and insurers has asked the federal judiciary to write third-party litigation funding disclosure into the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, escalating a campaign that has so far played out mostly in state legislatures and individual courtrooms.

As reported by Bloomberg Law, the signatories include Johnson & Johnson, 3M, Uber, Meta Platforms, Netflix and Samsung Electronics, a group that between them face a substantial share of the funded mass tort, antitrust and patent claims filed in US courts. Law360 reported that Amazon, Anthropic, Chubb and Walmart also signed on.

The letter asks for two things: the name and contact information of "any person or entity who is not a party in the case but provides funding or has a financial interest in the action," and copies of the funding agreements themselves. The coalition argues that disclosure "would provide courts, litigants, and the public with information that is critical to managing cases and maintaining judicial integrity," and describes the absence of a uniform federal rule as inexplicable given the forum shopping it invites.

The request is directed at the Advisory Committee on Civil Rules, which is scheduled to meet in October. A subcommittee chaired by Judge R. David Proctor has been studying litigation funding since 2024 without producing a rule proposal.

Several signatories have already acted on their own. Uber has written disclosure provisions into its customer and driver contracts, and Amazon updated its conditions of use to require disclosure in mass arbitration.

A new commentary argues that the debate over funder disclosure in patent cases is not really about transparency at all, but about whether an independent inventor's family retains the value of what the inventor spent a career building.

As reported by IPWatchdog, the piece is written by Scott Moskowitz, founder of Blue Spike and Wistaria Trading and a named inventor on more than 110 patents. His starting point is that patents are inheritable property with twenty-year terms that outlast careers, yet the US enforcement architecture strips their value while owners are alive.

Moskowitz points to empirical work measuring the market reaction to inter partes review petitions, including a one-day abnormal return of roughly -12% following the first Hayman Capital challenge in 2015. A public company absorbs that as a bad quarter. For an inventor whose net worth is a portfolio, he argues, the same drop is a retirement, and the depressed figure becomes the only number available when the estate is later valued.

The commentary contrasts patents with other asset classes. Real estate, operating-company equity and art each have financing vehicles, insurance products and secondary markets. Patents have none at scale, because no lender will take collateral exposed to a PTAB invalidation rate of 61% to 70%.

Against that backdrop, the piece argues that litigation finance filled the gap because nothing else could, and that pending disclosure measures would remove it. It singles out the March 2026 rules suggestion before the Advisory Committee on Civil Rules, the USITC's proposed 19 C.F.R. § 210.14a, and S.3826, the Litigation Funding Transparency Act of 2026.

Moskowitz's proposed alternative is symmetry: treat funder disclosure the way Rule 26 and Rule of Evidence 411 already treat insurance, with mandatory disclosure on both sides paired with a restriction on using it to prove the merits.

The High Court has declined to pause the Mariana dam litigation against BHP while a dispute over who represents the claimants is resolved, keeping the case on its existing timetable.

As reported by Legal Futures, the court rejected an application by Bailey Glasser International to stay proceedings. Pogust Goodhead, which acts for more than 400,000 claimants over the 2015 Fundão dam collapse in Brazil, characterised the outcome as its first victory in the representation dispute.

The court also directed that the underlying dispute over representation be determined at an expedited hearing on 5 and 6 October. Notably, it rejected Bailey Glasser International's request that the hearing be held in private, meaning the arguments over control of one of the largest group claims in English legal history will be aired publicly.

The ruling preserves the existing case management timetable, including the quantum trial listed for April 2027.

Pogust Goodhead chief executive Alicia Alinia said: "The ruling is an important win for our clients. The court has rejected any attempt to delay this litigation and confirmed that the timetable towards justice remains intact." She added that after almost 11 years, the claimants "deserve clarity, not delay."

The outcome matters beyond the parties. The Mariana claim is among the most heavily funded pieces of group litigation in the English courts, and a prolonged stay would have pushed back recovery timelines for the capital deployed behind it. Bailey Glasser International and the client committee were approached for comment.