A U.S. Patent and Trademark Office proposal to require third-party requesters for ex parte reexamination to name all real parties in interest has drawn a sharply divided response, with the dispute turning on the same transparency questions that animate the broader litigation funding disclosure debate.

As reported by IPWatchdog, 26 comments were filed before the period closed on 21 August, submitted by 17 organisations and eight individuals. The July rulemaking notice proposed that requests identify the requester and any other real parties in interest, with statements kept confidential on request, so the Office can assess whether statutory estoppel provisions bar a filing. The USPTO said it has received a significant number of reexamination requests aimed at patents already challenged in inter partes or post-grant review.

Eight of the 17 organisational comments opposed the rule outright. Supporters included Adeia, Nokia, Dolby Laboratories and the Council for Innovation Promotion. Adeia said it received ten anonymous requests between October 2025 and April 2026 after more than a decade without any, and had to defend its patents without knowing whether the requester was a licensee, competitor, affiliate of an estopped party or a foreign-backed organisation.

Dolby went further, arguing that a requester's own identification may be insufficient and proposing that requesters answer factual questions about their business model, member or subscriber funding, and the source of funds used for the challenge. Nokia recommended additional guidance covering indemnification obligations, industry consortia and third-party funding.

Opponents including the Business Software Alliance, Unified Patents and the PTAB Bar Association argued the Office has produced little evidence that estopped parties are exploiting anonymous reexamination, and warned that importing a fact-intensive real party in interest inquiry into an examiner-driven proceeding without discovery would generate satellite disputes and deter legitimate filings.

Ireland's centuries-old prohibition on third-party funding has become the practical barrier to collective redress claims against the technology companies that base their European operations there, with only one class action filed in the country in the five years since the EU opened the door to them.

As reported by POLITICO, Ireland is the only EU member state that bars a funder from financing litigation unless it has a direct or legitimate interest in the case. The restriction stems from the medieval doctrines of maintenance and champerty, written into Irish law in 1634 and still in force. England abolished both offences in 1967; Ireland's courts have continued to uphold the ban, with narrow exceptions such as charitable donations made without expectation of a share of any award.

The prohibition collides directly with the EU's 2020 Representative Actions Directive, which permits only non-profit qualified entities to bring class actions. Those organisations typically depend on outside capital to fund proceedings against well-resourced defendants. Five non-profits are registered in Ireland to bring such claims, but only one case has been lodged — the Irish Council for Civil Liberties' challenge to Microsoft's online advertising system, financed from the organisation's general budget.

Johnny Ryan, who directs the ICCL's enforcement unit, said complex litigation in Ireland costs at least €1 million at first instance and that the organisation "cannot take multiple cases unless the State allows us to raise the necessary funds." He described the combination of the EU's non-profit requirement and Ireland's funding ban as a "fatal contradiction" for consumers seeking compensation.

Ireland's Law Reform Commission is due to publish a report later this year on whether the rules should change, though Justice Minister Jim O'Callaghan has said he is "very hesitant" about permitting third-party funding. The European Commission said it is assessing implementation of the directive and that member states banning funding must ensure costs do not obstruct qualified entities.

Administrators to collapsed litigation funder Woodville Consultants Limited are investigating allegations that the company used money raised from new investors to pay promised returns to earlier ones, and have told investors that no reliable estimate can yet be placed on the value of the company's litigation funding portfolio.

As reported by The Law Society Gazette, the disclosure comes in Kroll's third update to investors since the Pontypridd-based business entered administration on 16 July by order of the High Court. Woodville focused on funding car finance redress claims and is understood to have raised more than £390 million from investors through unregulated loan notes.

Kroll reported that the funding arrangements have proved "more complex than initially understood," with some involving multiple parties, intermediary structures, overlapping contractual documents and inconsistent records of how money moved and on what basis it might be recovered. The administrators have met two law firms and remain in dialogue with others as they assess next steps, while also weighing how the Financial Conduct Authority's own motor finance redress scheme — designed to bypass claims brought by lawyers — could affect the timing and value of any recoveries.

The report also removes a source of comfort for investors. Performance bonds issued by Ohio-based insurer Talisman, which the administrators reviewed, do not cover amounts Woodville owes to investors. Kroll noted that some investors "were led to believe these bonds were a full insurance protection for their capital."

Separately, the administrators are reviewing Kairos Litigation, a venture established earlier this year by Woodville directors Ann Marie Bell and Peter Legge that sought to raise money through a tokenised loan note programme, as well as allegations concerning the possible mis-selling of insurance guarantees and a crypto-investment opportunity offered shortly before the collapse. No conclusions have been reached, and the administrators say it remains too early to draw reliable conclusions about recoveries.

The Unified Patent Court has ordered a newly formed patent claimant to post €200,000 in security for costs after concluding that the entity was economically assetless because its patents, licences and future income had all been pledged to its litigation funder.

As reported by Mishcon de Reya, the Hamburg Local Division reached that finding in *Nixu v Infoblox* (UPC_CFI_360/2026). Nixu, a US-domiciled claimant, was incorporated in March 2025 and acquired the patent in suit weeks later. The court declined to treat US domicile as a ground for security in itself, holding that "a claimant's domicile in the US did not, in itself, justify security for costs" and noting that US courts recognise European judgments.

What did justify security was the claimant's financial structure. Under a Patent Security Agreement, all patents, licences and future income were pledged to the funder, and part of the purchase price remained unpaid. The court found Nixu was "basically assetless in an economical sense" and dependent on discretionary support from its funder.

The same update reports a second security decision. In *La Siddhi v Athena Pharmaceutiques* (UPC_CoA_48/2026), the Court of Appeal upheld a €75,000 order against an SME claimant, confirming that "a party's SME status does not, by itself, exempt that party from the obligation to provide security for costs." The court distinguished fee reductions and cost ceilings available to SMEs from the security regime under Article 69(4) UPCA and Rule 158, which contains no SME carve-out. Security was set at roughly 60% of the applicable €112,000 recoverable costs ceiling.

Together the decisions suggest the UPC will look through corporate form to the funding arrangement itself when assessing whether a claimant can meet an adverse costs award.

Insurance rating agency Demotech has called for a structural change to the way property and casualty insurers report loss costs, arguing that the current composite format masks the effect of technology-driven claim generation that is sometimes financed by third-party litigation funders.

As reported by PR Newswire, Joseph L. Petrelli, president and co-founder of Demotech, said the firm's 2022 review of failed carriers pointed to litigation as the decisive factor. "In 2022, our postmortem of failed carriers identified new, annual litigation as the proximate cause of what destroyed them," Petrelli said.

The argument turns on an assumption built into loss cost reporting decades ago. Petrelli noted that until the mid-1980s advisory organisations published rates and premiums for insurers to adopt or deviate from, and that "an implicit assumption underlying the original loss cost format was that an equilibrium existed in the relative claim frequency between claims reported and settled with policyholders, and claims litigated and negotiated with plaintiff firms."

Demotech's position is that the equilibrium no longer holds. Its research concluded that industrial-scale increases in litigated claims were achieved through technology, online marketing and advertising, "sometimes financed through third-party litigation funding." Petrelli also pointed to alternative business structures, managed services organisations and what he described as other mutations in the legal profession that "may circumvent the disclosure of third-party litigation funding."

The proposed remedy is to trifurcate loss cost data, disaggregating a single composite figure into claims closed without payment, litigated claims and non-litigated claims, each weighted by its own frequency. Demotech contends that the added granularity would allow insurers and regulators to price the litigated portion of a book directly rather than absorbing it into a blended average.

A new annual study of large jury awards has recorded the steepest year of nuclear verdict activity since 2009, and it places the erosion of tort reform — including rules governing third-party litigation funding — among the forces driving the increase.

As reported by Insurance Journal, the latest edition of Marathon Strategies' *Corporate Verdicts Go Thermonuclear* report counted nearly 200 verdicts of $10 million or more against corporate defendants in 2025, a 40.7% rise over 2024 and the highest total in sixteen years. Those awards totalled $25.6 billion. Forty of them cleared $100 million, the threshold Marathon uses for a "thermonuclear" verdict, and four exceeded $1 billion.

The spread across the economy widened as well. The report identified nuclear verdicts in 68 industries, up from 55 the previous year and 48 the year before that. Product liability accounted for 29 verdicts worth roughly $12 billion, while the insurance sector recorded five verdicts totalling $390 million. Texas, California, Florida and Maryland saw the heaviest activity.

Marathon attributes the trend to a combination of factors, stating that its research "identified corporate mistrust, social pessimism, erosion of tort reform, and public desensitization to large numbers as among the most important."

The reference to tort reform is notable given the pace of state-level legislative activity. Eight states — Arkansas, Georgia, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, Oklahoma and South Carolina — enacted tort reform measures in 2025, and those packages included both damages caps and expanded disclosure obligations for third-party litigation funders.

The findings are likely to be cited on both sides of the funding debate, with defence-side advocates pointing to verdict growth as evidence that disclosure rules are needed, and funders noting that the report identifies broader social and economic drivers rather than isolating litigation finance as the cause.

The seven celebrity claimants in the failed privacy action against the Daily Mail have been ordered to pay costs on the indemnity basis and to make a payment on account of £9.54m by 28 August, crystallising a gap between their after-the-event insurance cover and the publisher's claimed costs.

As reported by the Law Society Gazette, Mr Justice Nicklin found that the case went "well outside the norm" and that its "conduct was unreasonable to a high degree." The judge described the action as "litigation conceived and pleaded on an unjustifiably wide canvas," which was "speculative at origin and depended substantially on inference," with serious allegations maintained over a prolonged period on an inadequate evidential foundation.

The claims of unlawful information-gathering, brought by claimants including the Duke of Sussex, Baroness Lawrence and Sir Elton John, were dismissed last month following an 11-week trial. Associated Newspapers had exceeded its approved budget by more than £18.6m, with total costs amounting to what claimant lawyers called an "eye-watering" £34,481,622.54. The claimants hold legal expenses insurance covering £16.2m.

Nicklin J declined to impose a cap on recoverable costs, though he described the publisher's costs as "striking." The payment on account was set at £9,544,355, close to the £9,950,624.37 sought by Associated, which represented 65% of incurred pre-budgeted costs and 90% of budgeted costs.

The order converts a previously theoretical insurance shortfall into an immediate obligation, and stands as a reminder of how far ATE limits can fall short of defendants' actual costs in heavily contested, long-running litigation.

Hundreds of struck-out rugby head injury claims have been granted relief from sanctions in principle after the players switched solicitors, in a ruling that also records the appointment of independent counsel to advise the claimants on their position relative to their new law firm and their litigation funder, which sit in the same corporate group.

As reported by Legal Futures, Senior Master Cook allowed the claims to proceed despite non-compliance with unless orders on disclosure of medical records, taking "comfort" from the change of solicitor. The litigation involves around 1,000 claimants across rugby union and rugby league who allege serious head injuries from collision forces in matchplay and training, and that the governing bodies did not do enough to protect them. Between the two groups, 530 claimants stood struck out.

The players moved from Rylands Garth, described by the judge as "a relatively new firm with one qualified solicitor," to class action specialists KP Law, with Leigh Day assisting. Master Cook said that had the original solicitor continued to conduct the litigation, "I could not have had any confidence that future court orders would be complied with timeously or at all."

A witness statement from former Wales international Alix Popham, on behalf of the union players committee, said the players have appointed James Oldnall, managing partner of Milberg London, as independent counsel to advise them on their position "vis-à-vis KP Law and [litigation funder] Asertis (as Asertis and KP are part of the same corporate group)."

Relief will be subject to conditions to be decided at a further hearing, with minimum terms including payment of the defendants' costs of securing compliance and production of the missing documents.

Leslie Perrin, chairman of Calunius Capital, has argued that the Competition Appeal Tribunal's developing approach to litigation funding agreements poses a more immediate threat to the UK's opt-out collective actions regime than either the unimplemented Civil Justice Council recommendations or the still-awaited PACCAR reversal.

As reported by City AM, Perrin welcomed the government's recent light-touch proposals on the opt-out regime, which followed a Department for Business consultation and cover faster distributions in successful class actions, better management of legal costs and procedural reforms. But he wrote that funders still await implementation of key CJC recommendations on returns made a year ago, as well as the legislation promised to reverse the 2023 Supreme Court judgment in PACCAR.

His central concern is retrospective reassessment. Perrin wrote that the Tribunal "appears increasingly willing to revisit funding arrangements and priority agreements when determining distributions, effectively reassessing returns after a case has concluded," and that the concept of success being applied "remains uncertain and may depend on factors that were impossible to predict when funding was first committed."

Perrin framed the consequence in market terms: "Capital is mobile. Investors will only deploy funds into litigation if the potential return reflects the risks undertaken." He argued that no investment market can function if agreements are liable to be substantially redrawn after the event, and that if returns can be recalculated years later, funding becomes more expensive and some claims may never be brought at all.

Ten years after the first UK opt-out collective action was filed at the CAT, Perrin said scrutiny of funder returns is appropriate but must involve a level playing field, describing the issue as a test of whether Britain remains committed to a predictable and investment-friendly legal framework.

LB Capital, a specialty finance company providing pre-settlement litigation funding nationwide, has announced a planned $30 million institutional capital raise to support the expansion of its litigation finance platform.

As reported via PR Newswire, the company intends to pursue a strategic institutional capital partnership, with management expecting to begin discussions in September 2026 and targeting completion of the financing later in the year. The company said it will approach investment banks, private credit funds, family offices and strategic financing partners.

LB Capital operates through a partnership with Legal-Bay Funding, one of the more established lawsuit funding originators in the United States, and said it draws on more than twelve years of experience developing a proprietary origination platform. Proceeds from the raise are earmarked for an expanded funding portfolio and origination capacity, technology and infrastructure investment, longer-term growth initiatives, and a marketing expansion beginning in 2027.

Dr. Peter Caravella, the company's founder and chief executive, said the objective is to establish "a long-term institutional capital relationship that supports disciplined portfolio expansion while delivering attractive risk-adjusted returns." Chris Janish, chief executive of Legal-Bay Funding, said the company believes additional capital could "produce 30% origination sales growth over the next 3 years."

The announcement lands at a moment when consumer legal funding is under sustained scrutiny in the United States, with state legislatures weighing disclosure and rate rules and national media examining how advances to plaintiffs are financed. A raise of this size, aimed squarely at institutional credit investors, indicates that capital formation in the consumer segment is continuing regardless.

Newly filed accounts for Barings Limited, the north-west England claims firm known as Barings Law, show a business carrying substantial litigation funding debt at high interest rates and now seeking to restructure those facilities through a debt-for-equity swap.

As reported by the Law Society Gazette, the Companies House filing for the year to March 2025 shows pre-tax losses rising 78% to £22m on turnover up 490% to almost £2.2m. Long-term borrowing extended from £66m to £92m, leaving the business with net liabilities of £46m at the accounting date and £95,000 in cash against £47m of assets.

The funding terms are the striking detail. Loans totalling £59.4m are secured by fixed and floating charges in favour of the lender Claim Finance & Administration Co Limited, attract interest at rates of between 28% and 37%, and carry no fixed repayment date. The firm said it plans to repay all external litigation funding over the next five years, describing interest on borrowings as a "very significant" cost, and is negotiating a restructuring of its funding facilities that will include a debt-for-equity swap intended to remove the debt from the balance sheet and cut ongoing interest costs. Completion was expected by the end of August.

Chairman Robert Whitehead said the firm has invested heavily in caseload across motor finance, data breach and business interruption work, which must be funded up front while the value of work in progress goes unrecognised until cases settle. For the second year running, the auditor flagged a material uncertainty over the firm's ability to continue as a going concern, noting that much of its economic value sits in contingent fee case portfolios that cannot be booked as assets.

The Financial Conduct Authority has issued a consumer warning on high-risk mini-bonds and loan notes sold by unregulated firms, pointing directly to the collapse of a litigation funder as an illustration of what can go wrong.

As reported by Money Marketing, the regulator told consumers they could lose their entire investment in such products, and highlighted the failure of Woodville Consultants, which raised capital from retail investors through unregulated loan notes before entering administration. The FCA permanently banned the marketing of speculative illiquid securities, including mini-bonds and loan notes, to retail consumers in 2021, yet the products continue to surface in online advertising.

The regulator set out a series of warning signs for investors: pressure to commit quickly, vague explanations of how money could be lost, unsubstantiated claims that an investment is asset-backed, the involvement of unregulated introducers, pressure to self-certify as an experienced or high-net-worth investor, unclear fee structures and conflicts of interest, and attempts to create a false impression of legitimacy through links to regulated firms or overseas listings.

Lucy Castledine, the FCA's director of consumer investments, said: "Big, fixed returns are a warning sign, not a guarantee." The regulator has issued more than 1,200 warnings during 2026 and urged consumers to use its Firm Checker tool before parting with money. Separately, City AM reported that Woodville defaulted owing over £240m to investors. For the funding industry, the episode marks a shift in how regulators frame the sector's retail-facing edge — not as a niche investment product, but as a consumer protection problem.

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.

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.