Jonathan Wood and Daniel Hemming of Reynolds Porter Chamberlain take an in-depth look at third-party funding in the global litigation landscape:
“If the availability of funding means that more good claims are litigated and won, then, subject to the proper scrutiny and management of the funder’s role, this continued growth should be welcomed.”
In 1787, Jeremy Bentham ventured, as part of a famous attack on “the antique laws against what are called Maintenance and Champerty”, that:
No man of ripe years, and of sound mind, ought, out of loving kindness to him, to be hindered from making such bargain, in the way of obtaining money, as, acting with his eyes open, he deems conducive to his interest.
Over 220 years later, most of the major common law jurisdictions have taken his criticisms on board by removing or limiting the old common law restrictions on the third-party funding of litigation and are catching up with some of the civil law jurisdictions that embraced it a little earlier.
