Professor Andreas Stephan and Geradin Partners have today announced that they have secured funding from litigation funder Innsworth for a UK opt-out competition damages claim on behalf of UK-domiciled third-party sellers against Amazon. The claim, estimated to be worth over £2.5 billion, will focus on multiple anti-competitive practices by Amazon that have harmed UK sellers and will be filed shortly in the Competition Appeal Tribunal, the UK’s specialist competition court. 

Andreas Stephan, a leading competition law scholar and the Head of the University of East Anglia Law School, will bring the damages action on behalf of UK third-party sellers who have used Amazon’s platform. He has retained a team composed of Geradin Partners, Kieron Beal KC (Blackstone Chambers), Daniel Carall-Green and Hannah Bernstein (Fountain Court), and Frontier Economics. 

Amazon’s treatment of third-party sellers has come under significant scrutiny from regulators in the United Kingdom, Italy, the European Union and the United States. These regulators have identified competition concerns in relation to Amazon’s position of dominance, and conduct in the market for the supply of e-commerce marketplace services. In some cases, those regulators have imposed sanctions or required commitments from Amazon to address these concerns. Professor Stephan’s claim would be based on showing loss arising from multiple abuses of a dominant position and therefore will provide a comprehensive opportunity for sellers to obtain full compensation for harm caused by Amazon. Estimated damages are over £2.5 billion. 

Professor Stephan said: “Amazon has engaged in a variety of strategies to grow its e-commerce platform, lock sellers into it, prevent the expansion of rivals, and use that privileged position to exploit sellers that use its platform. I am bringing this litigation to give sellers in the UK the opportunity that they might not otherwise have to be compensated for all those unfair practices.” 

Founding Partner of Geradin Partners, Damien Geradin, said: “Amazon is one of the world’s largest companies. As regulators around the world are increasingly finding, Amazon has abused that position in multiple ways to prevent third-party sellers of all sizes from enjoying the benefits that flow from free and fair online commerce. This claim intends to give sellers the opportunity to seek redress for these anti-competitive practices.”

In a post on LinkedIn, Steven Friel, CEO at Woodsford, announced that the second edition of The Law and Business of Litigation Finance has been published by Bloomsbury Professional. The book is a holistic overview of the litigation finance industry and provides a guide to everything from how funders raise capital, to the key legal issues that are faced by those involved in third-party legal funding.

According to Bloomsbury’s listing, the new edition includes additional content on:

• The commercial and finance aspects of litigation funding, including insight into the different stakeholders involved
• Litigation finance in specific jurisdictions including Australia, continental Europe, Singapore, and Hong Kong
• Updates on case law based on new high profile cases in the UK, USA and Australia, and developments in legislation and regulatory measures in those jurisdictions.

As the editor of the book, Friel also thanked all the contributors to the second edition which include: Abdur-Razzaq A., David Capper, Tony Sebok, Helena Clarke, Emily Duffy, Evan Fried, Josh Goodman, Samantha Hewitt, Alex Hickson, Ari Jaffess, Gina Kim, Riley King, Zachary Krug, Michael Lange, Richard Leedham, Alex Lempiner, David G. Liston, Walter Mansfield, John Middlemass, Charlie Morris, Ravi Nayer, Alex Patchen, Lucy Pert, Eric Schuller, Neill Shrimpton, David Siffert, Mark Spiteri, Ben Summerfield, Christian Toms, David T.Joe Tyler, Simon Walsh, Chloe Hanson.

The book is available to pre-order through Bloomsbury’s website, and is scheduled to be released later this week on 13 June.

In a post on LinkedIn, The Association of Litigation Funders of Australia (ALFA) announced it will be hosting a conference on class actions in Australia, with the half-day event set to take place on the afternoon of 11 July in Sydney. The conference will be bookended by two keynote addresses, with the first delivered by the Hon. Justice Nichols from the Supreme Court of Victoria, and the second by Professor Michael Legg from the faculty of law at UNSW.

The core of the event will be comprised of three panel discussions which will respectively cover the global litigation insurance market, securities and consumer class actions, and best practice for competing claims and consolidation. Speakers across these panels include senior figures from industry leading companies such as Balance Legal Capital, CASL, Herbert Smith Freehills, Litica, and Piper Alderman.

For further detail about the conference and to register your attendance, visit the event websites for in-person and virtual attendees.

When looking at legislative and regulatory developments impacting litigation funders, we must commonly look at those measures specifically targeting third-party funding around issues such as disclosure and transparency. However, a proposition being brought forward in Nevada to limit contingency fees is being highlighted as a rule change that may benefit funders who will be able to take advantage of smaller law firms’ need for capital.

Reporting by Legal Newsline looks at a proposed law change in Nevada which would cap lawyer contingency fees at 20%, with legal analysts expressing concerns about the effect this might have on the state’s litigation regime. Proposition 22 has garnered huge support from Uber, with the rideshare company having spent $4 million in lobbying to back the rule change through the Nevadans for Fair Recovery group. However, the measure is seeing equal opposition by the state’s trial lawyers who have formed the campaign group, Uber Sexual Assault Survivors for Legal Accountability.

The article explains that it is Nevada’s business community who are stuck in the middle of this debate, with concerns that this 20% cap could increase the power and influence of third-party litigation funders in the state. Samir Parikh, professor at Lewis & Clark Law School, explained that Proposition 22 could benefit funders who support upstart “hungry law firms” and would need the third-party funding in place of higher returns from contingency fees.

The role of third-party funding in the Post Office case triggered a variety of responses from legal industry professionals and outside observers in the UK, with its utility as a tool for access to justice being weighed against the idea that claimants are not receiving sufficient proportions of compensation compared to funders. A recent panel discussion at a leading industry event has highlighted these competing ideas, and how funding has entered the legal ‘mainstream’ after a sustained period of increasing adoption.

An article by CDR provides a recap of discussions held at the London International Disputes Week (LIDW) conference, offering particular insight into a panel on ‘Emerging Trends and Public Perceptions in Class Actions, Funding and Corporate Accountability’. The panel discussion saw contributions from Tim West, partner at Ashurst, Simon Pugh, partner at Portland Communications, Lorraine Lanceley, partner at Stewarts, and Andrew Mizner, editor at CDR.

The panel explored the growing influence of litigation funding in UK class actions, noting that the increased public profile of third-party funders had attracted mixed reactions from industry participants and the wider public. Pugh suggested that, at the moment, “the public perceives lawyers and funders as the principal beneficiaries of the regime,” and that “the onus has to be on the funders to explain the difference between cost versus profit, and accounting for their risk.”

West concurred with this idea that there was scepticism and concern directed towards funders from those observing the way compensation from class actions has been distributed. On the other hand, Lanceley noted that despite these questions of perception, it is clear that litigation funding has become part of the ‘mainstream’ in UK class actions, and that this is reflected in the number of clients who are proactively looking for funding to support their claims.