Regulation and Litigation Finance

The topic of regulation in litigation finance has been raised more and more frequently in recent news.  Part of this is likely attributable to the rapid growth and success of the relatively new industry in the United States.  Much of the talk of regulation is based on the topic of disclosure, when (if ever) should disclosure that a party to litigation is being funded by a third-party be mandatory? With the many ideas of regulation circulating but nothing finalized, this post seeks to identify a few key federal and state rules currently in place relating to disclosure in litigation finance to give a background understanding to the issue.

At the federal level, there is no rule that requires automatic disclosure of litigation finance agreements in any case. This is sometimes confused with Rule 29.6 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure that requires disclosure of any parent corporation or public shareholder that owns ore than 10% of the party’s stock.  This rule does not encompass litigation funders as they are not parent corporations or public shareholders, and financing litigation is not the same as buying stock in the company.

While there is no general federal rule requiring disclosure, half of the circuit courts of appeal (6 out of 12 courts) have local variations on FRCP 26.1 that requires all outside parties with a financial interest in the outcome to be disclosed.  At the federal district court level only 24 out of 94 district courts have a similar local variation to rule 26.1 to require disclosure of outside parties with a financial interest in the outcome.  However, it is critical to note that these local variations do not specifically call-out litigation financers and could apply equally to any type of funders (ex: banks).  Additionally, as a practical matter, the language in these disclosure provisions is extremely broad to potentially include a large number of commercial relationships and it is often not followed or enforced.

At the state level, almost all states do not require the disclosure of litigation finance in commercial litigation.  The one exception to this is Wisconsin.  In March of 2018, Wisconsin passed a law requiring parties in all civil litigation to disclose funding arrangements.  This seems to be in an effort to regulate consumer litigation funding.  However, Wisconsin is such a small part of commercial litigation, making up only 0.11% of civil matters in all US state courts it is unlikely that this one state’s regulation will have much of an effect.

It should be noted that these regulations are in regards to commercial litigation finance in the United States.

Topics:  litigation finance, alternative litigation finance, third-party funding, regulation, disclosure, commercial litigation

 Works Cited: Christopher P. Bogart, Litigation Finance Disclosure in the US: Common Sense v. False Narratives, Bloomberg Big Law Business (July 11, 2018).

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