Taking off

In America, everyone’s a plaintiff. Whether you’ve eaten too many burgers or paid too much for vitamins, you’re likely – even if you’re unaware of it – to be drawn into a multimillion-dollar class action. It’s far from classy. Although Europeans like to regard the legal profession on this side of the pond as being somewhat more civilised, recent events suggest that the litigation landscape is shifting. Most strikingly, the prospect of class actions proliferating here is a real possibility.

To date, the UK has been spared from the perceived excesses of America’s litigation culture, partly due to the absence of an over-zealous claimant Bar. Indeed, since the Woolf reforms of 1999, litigation in the UK has declined significantly, not least because of the relatively benign economy. However, the arrival in London of America’s leading class action firm, Cohen, Milstein, Hausfeld & Toll, has signalled that all this could be about to change.

Cohen Milstein is already using its greater global reach to bring class actions in the US against British Airways and Virgin Atlantic for price-fixing– it is co-lead counsel along with Californian firm Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy. It is also exploring the possibility of proceedings against major UK supermarkets and dairy processors, following the Office of Fair Trading (OFT)’s provisional finding that collusion led to dairy product price increases of around £270m.

Several firms across the City have already followed Cohen Milstein’s lead and formed new class action departments; Lovells and Clyde & Co are prominent examples. ‘The claimant Bar is gearing up with some relish,’ comments Paul Llewellyn, head of UK product liability at Reed Smith.

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