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.

Consumer legal funding company Legal-Bay has reported that Pfizer Inc. and plaintiffs' leadership have entered into a settlement program intended to resolve a substantial share of the federal lawsuits alleging that the contraceptive injection Depo-Provera caused intracranial meningiomas.

As reported by Legal Bay, a case management order issued August 10, 2026 by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida recorded that the parties had entered into a settlement memorialized in an agreement dated July 22, 2026. The multidistrict litigation had 6,289 cases pending at the time of the order.

Terms are confidential and no aggregate value has been publicly confirmed. Legal-Bay estimates that roughly 5,000 claims may resolve for more than $1.2 billion, averaging about $250,000 per claimant, with awards for the most severely injured potentially approaching $1 million. Those figures are the funder's own projections rather than court-confirmed numbers. Pfizer has not admitted fault or liability.

Legal-Bay said the registration deadline for the program is November 30, 2026, and that it is offering non-recourse advances to claimants, repayable only if a case succeeds, with funding available within 24 hours for pre-approved brain tumor cases.

"This settlement program is an important development for claimants who have faced medical, emotional and financial uncertainty," said Chris Janish, chief executive of Legal-Bay.

A settlement structure of this scale creates a defined repayment horizon for consumer funders holding advances against Depo-Provera claims, though the confidentiality of tier amounts and eligibility criteria leaves individual case values unresolved until the claims review process begins.

Frankfurt-listed jewelry retailer elumeo SE has disclosed that its wholly owned subsidiary Juwelo Deutschland GmbH has entered into an agreement with a litigation funder and filed a damages claim against companies within the Vodafone Group.

According to an ad-hoc regulatory disclosure published on August 3, 2026, the funding agreement covers the expected costs of a damages claim against Vodafone Group companies which, in Juwelo Deutschland's view, "have charged excessive feed-in fees over the past fourteen years."

The action is brought by four plaintiffs, one of which is Juwelo Deutschland, against two companies within the Vodafone Group. The disclosure puts the damages sought at a low three-digit million euro figure. Feed-in fees are the charges broadcasters pay network operators to carry their channels; Juwelo operates a jewelry shopping channel distributed across Vodafone's German networks.

elumeo did not name the funder, nor did it disclose the economics of the arrangement, including the funder's return or its share of any proceeds. The company also did not identify the court in which the claim was filed.

Disclosures of this kind are mandatory filings under Article 17 of EU Regulation 596/2014, which requires listed issuers to publish inside information as soon as possible. That elumeo treated both the funding agreement and the filing as price-sensitive suggests the potential recovery is material relative to the company's size, and it offers a rare instance of a listed European issuer confirming on the record that a third-party funder is bearing the cost of its litigation.

A claims-acquisition firm has sued an electric vehicle charging company in Texas federal court over a warrant it purchased out of a Chapter 7 estate, seeking specific performance or damages exceeding $20 million.

According to a press release issued by Angel Deal Syndicate, the firm has filed against TECSO Charge Zone Limited, a Vadodara, Gujarat-based EV charging business, in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, Austin Division, as Case No. 1:26-cv-02071.

The instrument at the center of the dispute is the Accelerator Charge Zone Warrant, dated December 16, 2021, which Charge Zone issued to the startup accelerator Newchip. Angel Deal Syndicate says it acquired the warrant, and all rights Newchip held in it, from Newchip's Chapter 7 trustee at a court-approved auction in April 2024 in *In re Astra Labs, Inc.*, No. 23-10164-smr, before Judge Shad Robinson.

The firm alleges the warrant granted investment rights in qualified financing rounds together with access to financial records and notices of capital raises, and that those rights were not honored. It contends that non-compliance extended the enforcement period beyond the original two-year term, leaving the warrant exercisable through December 16, 2031. The complaint seeks specific performance or, alternatively, damages above $20 million, and adds counts for fraudulent concealment and a declaratory judgment confirming the warrant remains valid.

"This legal action underscores our commitment to fighting for small investor rights and ensuring transparency in financial dealings," said Val Kleyman, a spokesperson for Angel Deal Syndicate.

The account above is drawn from the plaintiff's own announcement, and the allegations are Angel Deal Syndicate's characterization of the dispute. TECSO Charge Zone has not publicly responded.

The Supreme Court of Western Australia has dismissed a A$7 million unfair preference claim brought by LCM Recoveries against the Commissioner of Taxation, finding that the company behind the claim had not been shown to be insolvent when the disputed payments were made.

As reported by Murrays Legal, the proceeding — *LCM Recoveries Pty Ltd v Commissioner of Taxation [No 2]* [2026] WASC 327 — concerned $7,005,329.27 paid to the Australian Taxation Office across 86 transactions between December 2012 and June 2013. LCM Recoveries pursued the claim as assignee of the liquidators' causes of action rather than as a funder standing behind the liquidators.

The court was not satisfied that the company was insolvent on the date relied on to trigger the statutory presumption of insolvency, or during the preference period that followed. It found the company faced liquidity problems but that the evidence did not establish an endemic shortage of working capital, noting that its books and records were incomplete and that internal reports relied on by the applicant's expert were too unreliable to establish insolvency. The Commissioner also succeeded on a good faith defence.

The judgment is likely to draw attention for its observations on the economics of assigned claims. On the figures before the court, even a full recovery would have returned roughly $206,916 to unsecured creditors after liquidator remuneration and costs, while the assignee retained the substantial balance. The court described as serious the question of whether an award in favour of an assignee that produces no benefit to the general body of creditors is consistent with the purpose of the preference regime.

The think tank Civitas has published a report on the UK class action and third-party litigation funding market that calls for funders to trace their ultimate capital ownership to named individuals, arguing that the reforms government has committed to so far leave structural gaps unaddressed.

According to Litigation Nation: The growth of a class action claims culture, written by Danna Brown and published this month by Civitas: Institute for the Study of Civil Society, the Civil Justice Council's 2025 review of the funding market produced 58 recommendations for reform, of which the government committed to accepting only two. The report argues that this approach leaves both the industry and the wider system exposed.

The report sets out three changes it says should be made to third-party litigation funding: a disclosure obligation to trace ultimate capital ownership to natural persons; sanctions screening conducted as a procedural prerequisite rather than a discretionary step; and robust checks to establish that a funder is financially fit to bear the risk it assumes when financing a claim. It concludes that implementing these safeguards "would give the market the institutional legitimacy on which the rule of law depends."

Civitas frames the paper as a contribution to public debate on legal culture, collective proceedings and regulatory reform in England and Wales. The report carries an explicit note that no company, law firm, funder, claims management company or individual named in it is accused or suspected of wrongdoing, and that identifying gaps in the regulatory framework should not be read as an allegation of misconduct against any party.

The Alliance for Responsible Consumer Legal Funding has pointed to Kansas as a template for legislators who want to close off foreign involvement in litigation finance without curtailing consumer advances, arguing that the two categories should be regulated separately.

As reported by The Washington Times in a letter to the editor from ARC President Eric Schuller, concerns that foreign governments may use litigation financing to reach sensitive information or advance strategic interests against American companies "deserve serious attention" — but consumer legal funding, he writes, "is not commercial litigation financing and policymakers must distinguish between the two."

The letter uses H.B. 2518, the Transparency in Consumer Legal Funding Act, as its illustration. The Kansas statute bars consumer legal funding companies from accepting money from a "foreign government or foreign adversary" as those terms are defined under federal law. It also defines consumer legal funding as a non-recourse transaction for household or personal expenses and expressly excludes costs tied to prosecuting the claim itself, alongside prohibitions on funders controlling litigation or settlement decisions and on using advances to pay attorney fees, court costs or filing fees.

Schuller notes the bill passed unanimously in both the Republican-controlled Kansas House and Senate before being signed by Democratic Governor Laura Kelly, and frames that record as evidence the approach travels across party lines.

His closing argument turns on scale. A typical recipient, he writes, is someone injured in a car accident who needs $3,000 or $4,000 to cover rent or groceries while a claim resolves — a transaction he says "bears little resemblance to multimillion-dollar commercial litigation."

Manolete Partners, which describes itself as the UK's leading insolvency claims financing company, has announced the completion of a large case that produced a £3.425 million settlement payment, received in July 2026. The AIM-listed funder said its share of the recovery forms part of expected realised revenues for the current financial year and that board expectations remain unchanged.

As reported by Investegate, the case followed the insolvency of a UK company whose liquidator identified potential claims arising from pre-liquidation transactions involving former connected individuals and entities, with assets held through associated businesses. The estate lacked the resources to investigate and litigate a complex multi-party matter, so the liquidator assigned the claims to Manolete.

The funder's account of the case illustrates the mechanics of insolvency claim purchase. After taking assignment, Manolete conducted its own investigation, assumed the litigation risk and issued proceedings in the High Court. It also obtained proprietary and freezing injunctions against the defendants, which remained in force while the claim progressed — a step aimed at preventing assets from being dissipated before judgment.

"By purchasing the claim, financing the litigation, obtaining asset preservation measures and pursuing recovery through the courts, Manolete converted a complex and potentially high-risk insolvency claim that could otherwise have remained dormant into a multi-million-pound recovery," the company said, noting the insolvency practitioner realised value without committing estate funds to protracted litigation.

Manolete says it has financed and completed more than 1,400 cases to date and puts the UK insolvency claims market it serves at over £500 million annually. The disclosure was made through RNS Reach, the London Stock Exchange's non-regulatory release channel, and was accompanied by a case study published on the company's own site in late July.

India's Ministry of Corporate Affairs has told a parliamentary standing committee that it will examine third-party litigation funding as a means of pursuing avoidance transactions under the country's insolvency regime, where more than ₹4.38 trillion in creditor value currently sits unrecovered.

As reported by Business Standard, the ministry said in a written reply that "litigation funding for PUFE transactions will be examined in light of global best practices and refined through detailed consultation with all relevant stakeholders." PUFE refers to preferential, undervalued, fraudulent and extortionate transactions — the clawback claims brought against company insiders who moved assets out of a business before insolvency proceedings began. The ministry acknowledged that India's litigation funding market remains nascent.

The scale of the backlog explains the interest. Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India data cited in the report shows funds worth over ₹4.38 trillion locked across 1,878 avoidance applications as of March 31, 2026. Through June 2025, only 379 cases involving roughly ₹66,919 crore had been disposed of, with about ₹7,931 crore ordered clawed back.

Practitioners attribute the shortfall to money, not merit. "Third-party funding, if allowed in PUFE claims, could easily cover legal, investigation, and expert costs, with returns tied to success," said Daizy Chawla, senior partner at S&A Law Offices.

The parliamentary panel endorsed the concept while attaching conditions: mandatory disclosure of funding arrangements to the adjudicating authority and the Committee of Creditors, a prohibition on funder control of litigation strategy, transparent return structures, and regulatory oversight by the IBBI.