Deminor's newest Dutch hire has said many sound business-to-business disputes in the Netherlands go unpursued because of cost, risk or resource constraints, pointing to an opening for litigation funders.

As reported by Litigation Finance Insider, Wouter de Jong discussed his move into funding in an interview published on 4 October. De Jong joined Deminor as Senior Legal Counsel in its Utrecht office after more than 14 years in disputes, including eight as a patent litigator in private practice and six as Head of Litigation at a major international company, as Deminor announced in September.

He said litigation funding is less unfamiliar to Dutch companies than it was 15 years ago but remains poorly understood. Two misconceptions recur with clients: the non-recourse "no cure, no pay" structure, and the extent to which Deminor offers litigation expertise beyond capital. He credited the Netherlands' legal system, efficient proceedings and strong judiciary for producing meaningful outcomes within reasonable timeframes.

De Jong also highlighted intellectual property. The Unified Patent Court, he said, lets patentees resolve disputes across larger territories in a single forum, and he has seen rising local inquiries about patent funding. Patent cases demand deeper underwriting of the technology and the scope of protection, making them slower to assess than typical commercial disputes.

The interview signals where Deminor expects growth from its Dutch presence, which opened in June as its tenth office worldwide: single-claim commercial and IP disputes, rather than the collective actions for which the Dutch market is better known.

A senior investment manager at Loopa Finance has argued that litigation finance regulation should safeguard transparency and independence without restricting pricing, access to capital or the industry's ability to innovate.

As reported by Litigation Finance Insider, Marina Gouveia, Senior Investment Manager at Loopa Finance, said in a commentary published on 4 October that standards-based oversight is preferable to prescriptive statutory rules. She identified transparency, independence, contractual clarity and the integrity of proceedings as the priorities.

Gouveia noted that the market spans single-case funding, portfolio financing, award monetisation and law firm or corporate structures, and that sophisticated corporate clients and individual consumers have very different needs. A uniform regime, she suggested, would fit neither well. She also warned that return caps could make some claims less commercially attractive to finance, particularly those needing large upfront costs or long proceedings, which could narrow access to justice.

She accepted that some regulatory goals are legitimate, including managing conflicts of interest, ensuring parties understand their agreements, verifying that funders have the resources to perform, and protecting claimants' control over strategy and settlement. Her preferred route is standards that evolve through courts, arbitral institutions, counsel and funders as new risks emerge, rather than legislation attempting to anticipate future products.

The piece names no specific jurisdictions or bills. It arrives as regulators in the UK, EU and several US states continue to debate disclosure and oversight rules, and it reflects the self-regulation approach funders such as Loopa have promoted through bodies including the European Litigation Funders Association.

Pogust Goodhead, trading as PGMBM, has said it is opposing an application to hold today's High Court hearing on who represents more than 400,000 claimants in the Mariana Dam litigation under seal.

According to a statement issued by PGMBM, lawyers acting for the Mariana Client Committee served an application on Monday asking the court to hold the hearing in private. A PGMBM spokesperson said the firm believes the move "flies in the face of access to justice" for the claimants affected by the disaster, and described transparency for clients as fundamental. PGMBM said it is urgently asking the judge to reject the application in the public interest.

The hearing is an expedited two-day session on 5 and 6 October to decide which firm should act for the claimants. As Legal Futures reported, the High Court earlier refused a request to stay the proceedings and directed that the representation dispute be determined at that hearing, rejecting calls for it to be held in private. The dispute pits PGMBM against Bailey Glasser International, which the Client Committee has sought to instruct in its place.

The statement did not say how the court has responded to the new application, and the application itself was supplied to media only as an attachment. PGMBM's account is one side of a contested matter, and the Client Committee's lawyers have not been quoted.

The fight over the case, a claim against BHP over the 2015 Fundão dam collapse, has drawn attention across the litigation funding market because control of a mass claim of this size determines how funders, lawyers and claimants are aligned ahead of the quantum trial listed for April 2027.

With the Solicitors Regulation Authority's consultation on third-party funding now closed, an after-the-event insurer has argued that the existing disbursement funding market will not satisfy the standards the regulator is contemplating.

As reported by Legal Futures, the SRA is considering new professional conduct standards that would require solicitors to maintain independence from funders and to tell clients that funders are not regulated by the SRA. The proposals would also require funding information to be given to clients in clear, plain language, covering redress options and how to claim on legal expenses insurance, and would require firms to document their assessments of third-party funding arrangements and report regularly to the SRA.

The 10-week consultation closed on 17 September. The piece, contributed by Allianz Legal Protection, argues that tighter regulation is likely as the SRA seeks to reduce the risk of further large-scale law firm failures.

On the funding mechanics, the article contends that current arrangements leave firms exposed. Drawdown facilities supported by ATE insurers typically cover only around 25% to 30% of a firm's total disbursement funding requirement, while partnerships with medical agencies generally offer deferment periods of two or three years. Because both are capped or time-limited, the article argues they rarely cover a firm's full disbursement funding need.

Allianz Legal Protection's proposed answer is to provide full disbursement funding as an insured benefit within the ATE policy itself, with payment made as disbursements are incurred rather than through a separate funding facility.

The piece is sponsored content from an insurer with a product to sell. Its underlying point is nonetheless relevant to the industry: if the SRA proceeds, consumer-claims firms will have to document and justify their funding arrangements to the regulator, and the structures they currently rely on will be assessed against that standard.

Over 800 current and former shareholders in Home REIT have brought claims in the High Court against the company, its directors and its former advisers, in one of the larger UK shareholder actions to be issued this year.

As reported by City AM, the claims are being run by Harcus Parker and name Home REIT and its directors alongside Alvarium Home REIT Advisors, the former investment adviser, and Alvarium Fund Managers, the former alternative investment fund manager, together with other parties connected to the company.

The shareholders allege that Home REIT misled investors about the security of its rental income, the financial strength of its tenants, the social impact it claimed to deliver, and the acquisition, use and valuation of its property portfolio. The claims are pleaded as statutory securities claims for misleading reports and accounts, together with deceit and negligent misrepresentation.

Harcus Parker partner Nate Barber said the claimants' case "is that what investors were told did not reflect the reality," adding that "what has happened since is extraordinary" and that shareholders "are entitled to understand how that happened." Home REIT said it "notes today's announcement" and would comment further "at an appropriate time."

Home REIT raised more than £850 million from investors between 2020 and 2023 to acquire accommodation for homeless people. Short-seller Viceroy Research raised concerns about the portfolio in late 2022, the Serious Fraud Office later opened an investigation, and the shares were suspended for roughly three years before resuming trading in April 2026.

No litigation funder is identified in connection with the claims. Opt-in shareholder actions of this scale typically require substantial book-building and adverse costs cover, making the financing structure behind the claim a point of interest as the proceedings advance.

Manolete Partners has completed another substantial insolvency claim, announcing the settlement of a large case for £3 million and confirming that board expectations for the year remain unchanged.

As reported by Investegate, the AIM-listed funder said in a regulatory announcement on 2 October that the case was successfully completed in late September 2026. The settlement forms part of the company's expected realised revenues for the current financial year, alongside realisations from the rest of its portfolio.

Manolete described itself in the announcement as the United Kingdom's leading insolvency claims financing company and attributed the outcome to its operating model, noting that it purchases and manages nearly all of its cases rather than passively funding them. The company credited its expertise in managing and progressing complex litigation and in asset preservation.

The announcement did not name the case, the insolvent estate or the defendants, and gave no guidance on when cash from the settlement will be received. No management commentary accompanied the release, which lists chief executive Mena Halton and chief financial officer Will Sawyer as contacts.

The disclosure follows a £3.4 million settlement in a separate large insolvency claim that Manolete reported in August, and continues a pattern of discrete case-level announcements that give the market visibility on realisations between formal reporting periods. Manolete's half-year results are due in November.

Manolete's model sits somewhat apart from the broader commercial litigation funding market. Rather than financing a claimant's own action in exchange for a share of proceeds, it typically acquires insolvency claims from administrators and liquidators outright and prosecutes them in its own name, which places realisation timing and case management risk directly on its own balance sheet.

A new analysis frames 2026 as the year state legislatures, rather than Congress, took the lead on third-party litigation funding, and advises in-house counsel to treat funding discovery as a standard part of litigation strategy rather than an exceptional step.

As reported by Best Lawyers, North Carolina became the first state to prohibit third-party litigation funding outright when Governor Josh Stein signed House Bill 315 on 22 June. The measure passed close to unanimously, is enforced by the state attorney general, and also gives private parties a right of action against violators.

Ohio has taken the regulatory rather than prohibitionist route. House Bill 105, signed on 7 July, takes effect on 6 October and introduces broad funding reforms addressing the role of funders in litigation strategy, discovery and settlement. The piece, written by Justin Smulison, reports that Michigan, Missouri and Tennessee are drafting comparable legislation with a particular focus on foreign-backed funding.

At the federal level, three vehicles remain in play. Senator Charles Grassley's Litigation Funding Transparency Act, introduced on 11 February as S. 3826, has had its disclosure provisions folded into the bipartisan Taxpayer Assistance and Service Act, which cleared the Senate Finance Committee in July. Representative Darrell Issa's Protecting TPLF From Abuse Act, H.R. 7015, was introduced on 12 January and remained at committee stage as of July. Separately, the U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform and Lawyers for Civil Justice have proposed amending Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26 to require disclosure of nonparty funding interests.

The practical guidance for general counsel is granular: build funding discovery into standard case strategy in disclosure-statute jurisdictions, search for UCC-1 financing statements filed by suspected funders, review deposition testimony about payments made to plaintiffs during litigation, and treat unusual discovery objections as a signal worth following.

Petersen Energia and Eton Park have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to reinstate the $16.1 billion judgment against Argentina over the 2012 renationalisation of oil producer YPF, filing a petition for certiorari that keeps alive the single largest asset in commercial litigation finance.

As reported by Reuters, the petition was filed on 1 October by former U.S. Solicitor General Paul Clement. It presents two questions: whether a foreign sovereign can invoke its own domestic law to force claims into its own courts despite jurisdiction being established under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, and whether U.S. courts should defer to a sovereign's reading of its own law when that reading is advanced for the first time on appeal. The petition argues the Second Circuit's decision conflicts with Supreme Court precedent and has created a split among the federal appellate courts.

The Second Circuit overturned the award in March by a 2-1 majority, holding that the claimants' contract claims failed as a matter of Argentine law and belonged in Argentine courts. That ruling also vacated the June 2025 order requiring Argentina to turn over its YPF shares. The court denied a request for rehearing en banc in June.

Burford Capital, which funded the Petersen and Eton Park claims, said after the reversal that it would take a partial non-cash write-down of its YPF litigation assets and had flagged that the write-down could constrain its capacity to issue new debt and make new investments. Burford has also said it remains optimistic about an eventual positive outcome, pointing to the availability of international arbitration while acknowledging a meaningful delay in expected cash proceeds.

A spokesperson for Argentina's Treasury Solicitor's Office said the filing "constitutes a procedural step that had already been anticipated by the Argentine Republic and on which we are already working." The Supreme Court grants only a small share of petitions, and there is no fixed deadline for a decision on whether to hear the case.

The Supreme Court of Queensland has stayed an insider trading class action after ordering the plaintiff to post $630,000 in security for costs across seven defendants, finding there was reason to believe the company could not meet an adverse costs award.

As reported by Insurance Business Australia, the plaintiff, Blue Dog Group, never produced financial statements or management accounts despite repeated requests from the defendants about who was funding the case. The plaintiff's solicitor offered only general assurances that security would be provided "where it ought to do so."

Notably, no litigation funder is involved in the proceeding. That absence is central to the outcome: with no funder standing behind the claim, the defendants' costs exposure ran to the plaintiff company's own balance sheet, which was never disclosed. The court found there was reason to believe Blue Dog could not pay the defendants' costs — a proposition the plaintiff did not seriously contest.

The proceedings have been stayed and disclosure paused until security is posted.

The decision is a reminder that funding transparency cuts both ways. Defendants increasingly press for disclosure of funding arrangements as a route to security applications, and an unfunded corporate plaintiff that declines to open its books may find that silence treated as evidence of impecuniosity. For claimants without institutional backing, the practical effect is that a security order can stop a class action before the merits are reached.

More than 1,000 additional claimants in England and Wales have joined a group action against cryptocurrency exchange Binance and its founder Changpeng Zhao, bringing the total to roughly 2,700 consumers globally. KP Law, which is running the claim, describes it as the first of its kind in the United Kingdom.

As reported by The Law Society Gazette, the announcement coincided with the Financial Conduct Authority opening its authorisation gateway for the UK's new crypto asset regulatory regime, which comes into force on 25 October 2027. Binance is expected to apply under that regime.

The claim was filed in the High Court in June, and claims issued now exceed £250 million. Claimants allege that Binance sold high-risk leveraged and derivative products — including leverage, futures and options — to UK users without FCA authorisation between late 2019 and early 2020. They contend those products are specified investments under the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000, which may only be sold by authorised persons.

Binance has more than 300 million customers worldwide. Individual claimants are reported to have lost sums ranging from tens of thousands to millions of pounds.

KP Law partner Hannah Sharp noted that Binance Markets Limited was barred from carrying on regulated activity in the UK in 2021.

No litigation funder is identified in connection with the claim. Opt-in group actions of this scale nonetheless depend heavily on book-building and costs cover, making the financing arrangements behind the claim a point of interest as the case progresses.

The Competition Appeal Tribunal has revoked the collective proceedings order in Boyle v Govia Thameslink Railway, ending a claim first filed in 2021. The proceedings had been stayed since June of last year, when original class representative David Courtney Boyle died from Parkinson's disease, and no replacement representative was ever secured.

As reported by The Law Society Gazette, a CAT judgment published this month confirms that no new class representative came forward and that the CPO has been revoked. The GTR Collective Proceedings website states the claim was decertified on the basis of a CAT order made in April, and that the site will close shortly.

The failed search for a successor illustrates how dependent opt-out competition claims are on funding and insurance. Walter Merricks CBE announced plans to step into the role in November of last year, but withdrew his application in January after failing to secure after-the-event insurance. In May, he was ordered to make an interim payment of £70,000 towards the defendants' costs.

A costs hearing in the underlying proceedings has been adjourned to the next available date after 6 November.

A GTR spokesperson said: "GTR welcomes the end of the proceedings. We have always been clear that we acted lawfully and fairly towards our passengers."

The outcome underscores the structural fragility of CAT collective actions in which the class representative's position rests on securing adverse costs cover, and the practical difficulty of substituting a representative once a claim has already been stayed.

Burford Capital director Charlie Rooke argues that litigation funding in the United Kingdom has moved past the question of what legal finance is and into a narrower conversation about where a company's capital is best deployed.

As reported by Non-Billable, Rooke said the market "has moved from conversations around 'what is legal finance?' to 'how can legal finance support this particular case?'" He described a client base that increasingly includes well-capitalised businesses rather than claimants who cannot otherwise proceed, noting that Burford is "increasingly talking to large corporations about whether it makes sense to spend their own money on litigation or deploy that capital elsewhere."

Rooke, who spent six years as a commercial litigator at Freshfields before moving in-house at Royal Bank of Canada and joining Burford in 2022, sits on the firm's London underwriting team with a focus on competition disputes, including collective proceedings before the Competition Appeal Tribunal.

On underwriting, he said the analysis reduces to three questions: "do we think the case is going to win? If it does, when will it win? And how much will it win?" He added that Burford is overlaying its institutional experience with "an AI database containing information from the investments we've looked at across different jurisdictions, types of case, claimants, defendants and law firms."

Rooke also linked funding to changing law firm economics, suggesting capital can sit behind conditional fee arrangements, discounted rates with success uplifts and damages-based agreements. External investment in law firms has been possible for years, he said, "but I think AI is going to turbocharge that."

Australian litigation funder CASL is supporting a shareholder class action against hearing implant manufacturer Cochlear, filed in the Supreme Court of Victoria over the company's fiscal 2026 profit guidance. Cochlear has confirmed it was served with the claim and says it will defend the proceedings.

As reported by Health Services Daily, the proceeding is being run by plaintiff firm Echo Law with CASL funding, and covers investors who acquired an interest in Cochlear shares between August 15, 2025 and April 21, 2026 inclusive. The claim alleges breaches of continuous disclosure obligations and misleading or deceptive conduct.

The class period opens on the day Cochlear issued FY26 underlying net profit guidance of A$435 million to A$460 million, representing growth of 11% to 17%, and closes the day before that figure was withdrawn. On April 22, 2026, the company cut guidance to A$290 million to A$330 million, citing softer third-quarter sales and heightened uncertainty over fourth-quarter Middle East sales. The shares fell 40.7% in a single session, the largest one-day decline since listing, erasing more than A$4 billion of market capitalisation.

The claim alleges that conditions not reflected in the original guidance included slower growth in hearing healthcare markets, declining US consumer sentiment, difficulties in the Nucleus Nexa rollout in the United States and Germany, softer trading from January onward, and lower gross margins alongside restructuring costs.

Cochlear said it "denies the allegations set out in the claim and will be defending the proceedings," attributing the downgrade to factors that were not foreseeable when guidance was given.

Lawyers acting for United Petroleum have referred two litigation funders to the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, alleging that marketing material shown to prospective investors overstated the value of a franchisee class action against the fuel retailer.

As reported by ICLG, King & Wood Mallesons has referred Knightsbridge Litigation Funding and UP Capital to the regulator over an online investor briefing and follow-up emails that described a "pleaded value" of A$222 million for the claim and pointed to possible returns of up to 400%. Court filings seen by the publication do not contain that aggregate figure.

The underlying proceeding, *FNH United and others v United Petroleum Franchise and others*, was filed in the Supreme Court of Victoria in October 2022 and alleges misleading and deceptive and unconscionable conduct in connection with the allocation of Pie Face stock to franchisees. A 200-page amended statement of claim was filed in October 2024.

United Petroleum's barrister, Sam Rosewarne, told the court that "the market at large is being told this is a claim with a pleaded value," and the judge described the funders' conduct as "of concern."

A court funding notice filed in April recorded that Knightsbridge had entered a funding agreement and then assigned its rights and obligations to UP Capital, with Hong Kong-based Golden Crane acting as a co-funder. The Knightsbridge material offered a unit trust for wholesale investors, with capital held by Equity Trustees. The claimants were ordered to provide A$3.7 million in security for costs in April 2025.

Levitt Robinson Solicitors acts for the claimants, with TF Grundy as Victorian agents.

Litigation Capital Management has ended its search for a transaction and will wind down its portfolio, reporting a net loss after tax of A$165.7 million for the year ended June 30, 2026, compared with a loss of A$72.9 million in FY25. The funder closed the year with net liabilities of A$53.6 million, reversing net assets of A$114.4 million a year earlier.

As reported by Investegate, LCM's strategic review produced no transaction. The board has instead resolved to place the business into an orderly run-off, managing the existing portfolio to conclusion, making no new investments, and applying cash proceeds first to debt repayment rather than to shareholders.

The result was driven by adverse case outcomes rather than by operating costs. LCM concluded eight investments during the year, seven of which were losses, generating a net realised loss of A$63.9 million. A negative fair value movement of A$54.1 million across the continuing portfolio compounded the damage. Operating expenses were cut to A$11.0 million from A$18.0 million as the company reduced its cost base in anticipation of a smaller platform.

Alongside the results, LCM disclosed amended terms with senior lender Northleaf Capital Partners. The facility has been increased to US$125 million and its maturity extended to December 2030, giving the portfolio time to resolve, but the debt ranks ahead of equity and must be repaid in full before shareholders see any return.

The outcome marks a significant retrenchment for one of the listed litigation finance sector's longest-established names, and underscores how concentrated case risk can move a funder's balance sheet within a single reporting period.

A new practitioner guide warns that plaintiffs negotiating commercial litigation funding agreements face two distinct tax problems — one on receipt of the funder's advances, the other on collection of proceeds — and that both must be resolved in the document itself, because afterwards a claimant's options narrow considerably.

As reported by the National Law Review, authors Jonathan Friedland and Jeremy T. Waitzman use the example of a $1 million advance at closing to illustrate the front-end risk. While loan proceeds are generally excluded from gross income, most litigation funding is non-recourse, so repayment is contingent. In Novoselsky, the Tax Court held that upfront litigation support payments documented as non-recourse "loans" were not bona fide loans, were includable as prepaid income in the year of receipt, and sustained accuracy-related penalties. The court applied an unconditional-obligation-to-repay test alongside a multi-factor indebtedness analysis covering security, interest, fixed repayment schedules, ability to repay, and whether repayments were actually made. Novoselsky involved an attorney rather than a plaintiff, but the reasoning applies equally.

Industry practice, the authors write, is to structure advances as prepaid forward contracts or absolute assignments of a portion of anticipated proceeds, deferring tax until settlement — a more defensible path, though the IRS has not formally blessed the treatment. They also flag routing: advances paid to counsel versus to the plaintiff raise constructive receipt and anticipatory assignment of income issues. Their recommendation is to have the funder disburse fee advances directly to counsel under a separate fee-funding agreement to which the plaintiff is not a party, route operating-expense advances to the plaintiff, and specify recipient, purpose and tax reporting position for each tranche before execution rather than retrofitting afterward.

On the back end, the guide identifies a character mismatch: recoveries are typically ordinary income, while the funder's return may generate a capital loss capped at $3,000 a year for individuals, stranding it as a carryforward.

Burford Capital has released a new issue of the Burford Quarterly, its journal of legal finance, arguing that the decisions law firms and corporate legal departments face on technology, growth and disputes are increasingly capital allocation decisions rather than operational ones.

As reported by Burford Capital, Vice Chair David Perla said that "capital is playing an increasingly important role in how both companies and law firms make decisions about the future," and that the issue examines how "a more commercial mindset is reshaping the business of law." The edition collects four pieces aimed at general counsel, law firm leadership and finance professionals evaluating how legal assets and legal spend sit on the balance sheet.

Managing Director Evan Meyerson opens with "The future of law firms is a capital question," positioning technology investment and expansion as competing claims on finite firm capital. A second article explains monetization, under which non-recourse capital accelerates part of an expected recovery from a pending claim while the claimholder retains control of the litigation and its upside. A third presents new Burford research produced in association with The Lawyer, "The economics of disputes: What UK GCs and law firms told us about litigation in 2026," in which cost emerged as the leading factor in deciding whether to pursue a dispute at all. The final piece, "Patents as capital: Asia's next chapter in IP monetization," looks at developments in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan.

The framing reflects a broader repositioning by the larger funders, which increasingly market themselves less as litigation financiers and more as providers of corporate capital that happens to be secured by legal claims.

The Competition Appeal Tribunal has approved the distribution plan for the Woodsford-funded car delivery charges class action, setting a £25 payment for a class member's first vehicle in a deliberate attempt to drive engagement rather than to precisely mirror each individual's loss.

As reported by Legal Futures, consumers and businesses stand to receive up to £56 million of the £93 million in settlements reached so far, with costs, fees and disbursements accounting for a further £34 million. The damages pot comprises £34 million in guaranteed damages plus a further £22 million available if take-up is high enough; absent that, the additional sum may cover outstanding costs, pass to the Access to Justice Foundation, or revert to defendants that settled early. Distribution itself is expected to cost around £2.5 million. Payouts are set at £25 for a first vehicle, £5 for vehicles two through six, and at least £2.50 for each thereafter, with a potential further £2.50 depending on claim volume. Class members can take payment by bank transfer, Open Banking, PayPal, Nectar points, vouchers, or charitable donation.

Judge Hodge Malek KC said the plan "is not intended to operate as a mechanism for precisely reproducing the estimated loss suffered by each represented person," adding that the first-vehicle payment "is also intended to encourage represented persons to engage with the distribution process and submit claims." One defendant had argued payouts should open at £15 and called £25 a "windfall." The Tribunal pointed to the Stagecoach boundary fares settlement, where 1.4 million potentially eligible passengers claimed just £216,500 and almost £10 million went unclaimed.

Class representative Mark McLaren, who began the action in 2020 with funding from Woodsford and representation by Scott+Scott, said the team has "done everything we can to make this process as easy as possible for those affected." Five defendants have now settled a claim originally valued at around £150 million, covering 17 million new cars and vans sold or leased between October 2006 and September 2015.

TC Alternatives, the alternative investment platform of Toronto-based Timbercreek Capital, has reached the first close of the TC Alternatives Litigation Fund LP, a private closed-end vehicle built with mass tort specialist Reform Capital to give qualified investors structured exposure to the US mass tort litigation finance market.

As reported by Newsfile Corp, the fund — marketed as "T-LIT" — held its first close on September 28, 2026, and will continue raising toward an initial target of $50 million. The strategy deploys capital to finance claimant acquisition and case advancement on behalf of established US law firms, and in return takes a share of those firms' contingent legal fees once cases are successfully resolved and settled. TC Alternatives is targeting diversified exposure across established case equity, secondary acquisitions and earlier-stage opportunities, and describes the US mass tort market as an annual opportunity in excess of $40 billion.

Fraser McEwen, President and Portfolio Manager of TC Alternatives, said litigation finance "sits at the intersection of attractive returns and real-world outcomes." Reform Capital, founded by Daniel Dubois and Sean Jimenez, sources opportunities through relationships with US mass tort law firms and case administrators, and monitors case performance through its proprietary AI-driven analytics platform, Handled. Dubois said that "partnering with Timbercreek brings that approach to a broader base of investors, and puts more capital behind the law firms and claimants working to hold some of the world's largest companies accountable."

The fund is aimed at qualified investors. Its launch extends a pattern of established alternative asset managers building dedicated access points into litigation finance rather than allocating through existing funders.

FairPlay Legal has stopped funding Dutch gambling-loss claims and is terminating its existing files after the Hoge Raad, the Netherlands' Supreme Court, ruled that the absence of a Dutch licence does not by itself render an online operator's contracts void.

As reported by Casino Zorgplicht, the Court held in its 3 July 2026 judgment that the Wet op de kansspelen, the Dutch gaming act, never had the effect of invalidating contracts with operators acting contrary to article 1(1)(a). That conclusion removes the central legal theory underpinning thousands of claims seeking recovery of losses incurred with unlicensed offshore operators. The ruling followed preliminary questions referred in June 2024 by the district courts of Amsterdam and North Holland, and was consistent with the advisory opinion delivered by Advocate General Lindenbergh in November 2025.

FairPlay Legal withdrew financing immediately, telling the publication that the claims no longer offer "legal and commercial perspective." The funder, which worked exclusively with advocaat Pepijn Le Heux on the portfolio, said it will continue to pursue a separate category of cases in which operators refuse to pay out winnings. It has no connection to Fair Play Casino.

The decision illustrates how quickly a consumer-claims portfolio built on a single statutory argument can be wound down once an apex court closes the theory. Dutch gambling-loss claims had attracted significant funded volume over the past three years, and the ruling effectively strands files that had not yet reached judgment or settlement.

Linklaters has called for a new standalone hurdle at the certification stage of UK antitrust collective proceedings, arguing that claims should advance only where their expected financial benefits substantially outweigh the costs of bringing them.

As reported by PYMNTS, citing Law.com International, the firm submitted the proposal to the Department for Business and Trade's consultation on "Swifter and simpler competition redress, regulatory appeals and competition enforcement," published in July with responses due 25 September. Linklaters argued that the Competition Appeal Tribunal should apply heightened scrutiny to novel or unestablished theories of harm, and framed its concerns around litigation costs, third-party funding structures and the proportion of any award that ultimately reaches class members.

The submission enters a debate that has intensified since the Supreme Court's decision in Merricks, widely read as lowering the certification threshold and opening the door to a substantial pipeline of opt-out claims. Critics of the regime point to outcomes such as Waterside v Mowi, where the distribution of recoveries between class members, their lawyers and their funders drew judicial attention.

The proposal sits in direct tension with submissions from the claimant and funding side, including the International Legal Finance Association's call for the government to clarify rather than rebuild the opt-out regime. With the consultation window now closed, attention shifts to whether the Department for Business and Trade treats funder economics as a certification question or leaves it to the Tribunal's existing discretion.

Pogust Goodhead will abandon the name it has traded under since 2021 after both of its namesake founders publicly demanded their names be stripped from the firm, deepening a governance crisis at one of the most heavily funded claimant firms in the UK market.

As reported by Legal Futures, Harris Pogust announced via LinkedIn that he had issued a cease-and-desist demanding the firm stop using his name, saying he was "embarrassed to have my name anywhere on that document" in reference to proceedings the firm has brought against its own client committee. "You are suing someone you are asking the court to allow you to continue to represent?" he wrote. Co-founder Tom Goodhead followed with a similar demand days later.

A firm spokeswoman confirmed the change: "We intend to move away from the Pogust Goodhead name. The firm has moved on from its former leadership and its name should too." The rebrand will be the practice's fourth identity since 2018, following SPG Law and PGMBM.

The dispute centres on the £36 billion Mariana Dam claim against BHP, brought on behalf of more than 400,000 Brazilian claimants. Pogust Goodhead has filed a claim against its own client committee after the committee moved to replace it with Bailey Glasser International. An expedited hearing is expected.

For funders, the episode is a reminder that concentration risk in mass-claims portfolios extends beyond case merits to the stability of the firm running the book.

The Competition Appeal Tribunal has partially certified a revived consumer claim against Apple and Amazon, but conditioned certification on changes to the proposed class representative's funding arrangements and remuneration — the second time funding terms have been the pivotal issue in this proceeding.

As reported by the Cyprus Mail, Judge Kelyn Bacon found the claim concerning Apple product sales on Amazon's UK marketplace to be "plausible, credible and grounded in the facts," while refusing to certify broader allegations relating to other retailers as resting on a "complex and speculative theory of harm." The certified claim is valued at between £289 million and £306 million including interest. Tribunal records list the case as 1759/7/7/25, brought by JLP A&A Class Representative Limited, with Justin Le Patourel as the proposed class representative.

Funding has shaped this litigation from the outset. In January 2025, the Tribunal refused a collective proceedings order sought by academic Christine Riefa, finding she was insufficiently independent of her funder, Asertis, given an uncapped success-fee multiple, a priority-payment obligation and confidentiality over the funding terms. Interim costs of £1,695,797.16 were awarded, with a further £1,355,347.77 in interest.

The latest ruling signals that the Tribunal remains willing to certify substantial opt-out claims while treating funder economics and class representative compensation as conditions precedent rather than post-certification housekeeping. The claimant side will now need to redraft its funding terms before the proceedings advance.

Burford Capital has told the market it could be entitled to as much as $1.4 billion following a San Diego federal jury's award of roughly $5.7 billion to Taction Technology in a patent dispute with Apple. The verdict, returned after market close on Friday, is among the largest patent damages awards ever entered against the technology company.

As reported by PR Newswire, Burford said that if the award were paid as rendered, its entitlement would be approximately $1.4 billion, split roughly evenly between its balance sheet and its investment funds. The funder attached unusually heavy caveats to that figure, noting that Apple is expected to file post-trial motions including a motion for judgment as a matter of law, that any judgment would be subject to review by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, and that "very few large patent verdicts survive the post-verdict process intact." Burford cautioned that the ultimate recovery could be substantially lower than the verdict amount, or nothing at all.

Burford's shares rose approximately 9% in London trading following the disclosure, which was also filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission as an exhibit to a Form 8-K.

The announcement arrives roughly six months after the Second Circuit's reversal in the YPF matter, where Burford had reported a far larger potential entitlement tied to a $16 billion judgment against Argentina. That reversal underscored the volatility of concentrated, single-case exposures — a dynamic Burford's own caveats appear designed to pre-empt this time.

The Second Circuit has upheld a $4.8 million attorneys' fee award in a sex trafficking case, endorsing a district court's decision to strike time counsel spent communicating with its litigation funder.

In Moore v. Rubin, decided on September 4, a panel of Chief Judge Lohier and Judges Parker and Chin affirmed the award to six plaintiffs who won a $3.85 million jury verdict against former bond trader Howard Rubin under the Trafficking Victims Protection Act. In rejecting the argument that too many timekeepers had been compensated, the panel noted approvingly that the district court had applied a 15% across-the-board reduction and excluded non-compensable tasks, "such as communications with counsel's litigation funder."

The more consequential ruling for funders came below. In February 2025, Judge Brian Cogan of the Eastern District of New York refused to shift roughly $1.84 million in principal and interest owed to a third-party funder, reasoning that how a lawyer finances a practice is irrelevant to the client and the defendant alike. "Whether it is a bank loan, family loan, personal assets, or a litigation funder," he wrote, "it is overhead."

Judge Cogan also declined to follow the English decision in Essar Oilfield Services v. Norscot Rig Management, which allowed recovery of funding costs, observing that neither the statute nor the local rule hints at such recovery.

The funding cost denial was not before the appellate panel, as Rubin appealed only the fee award. The funder, Pravati Investment Fund IV, later sought unsuccessfully to intervene to protect its interest in the fees after the plaintiffs' firm dissolved.

Litigation funder Legalist has asked a federal court in Manhattan to confirm an arbitration award against a claimant it financed, in a rare public dispute between a funder and the plaintiff whose case it paid for.

As reported by Bloomberg Law, Legalist filed its petition on September 8 in the Southern District of New York, seeking to confirm a partial final award of $108,718.45 against Mario Rinaldi. The award, issued on May 18 by JAMS arbitrator the Hon. Elaine Rushing (Ret.), consists of $105,218.45 in attorneys' fees and $3,500 in arbitration costs.

The funding agreement dates to June 2018 and financed Rinaldi's suit against two French champagne producers, which he brought after working to build their brand in New York. A jury returned a $1.5 million verdict in his favor in March 2022, and final judgment with prejudgment interest was entered that December at $2,318,506.85. That judgment has not been collected. Rinaldi told Bloomberg Law he is still pursuing the money with his own resources, having retained French counsel to enforce it abroad.

Legalist alleges in its filing that Rinaldi breached the funding agreement by refusing to cooperate in collection efforts, including by declining to permit communication with his French counsel. According to the memorandum, Rinaldi did not appear in the arbitration at any stage, and has not moved to vacate or modify the award.

The arbitration was held open for Legalist to pursue further relief, indicating the $108,718.45 may not represent the full extent of its claim. No response from Rinaldi appears in the most recent public docket entries.