In April, Legal Business spoke to dozens of disputes counsel in private practice to ascertain the salient trends in contentious law. Near-universally, at the forefront of minds was an imminent and drastic increase in the volume of class actions and other group claims. Now, the in-house community has added its own wave of concerned voices.
A perfect storm of legal changes and market conditions have brought us to this point. In the UK for example, the seeds were planted in 2015 with the introduction of the Consumer Rights Act, which allowed UK consumers to seek collective redress on competition cases in a US-style class action system. Since then several class action claims have formed, among the most notable being the mammoth truck cartel case, in which thousands of individual and corporate claimants are pursuing damages from several of Europe’s biggest truck manufacturers over price collusion spanning multiple years. Continue reading “Braced for impact: GCs on the threat of group actions and collective redress”
The Legal Business Awards, held at Grosvenor House on 30 September, provided the perfect backdrop to honour the leading lights of the in-house legal community from the last year. Taking the top prize of GC of the Year was easyJet’s legal chief Maaike de Bie (pictured), recognised for piloting the company successfully as the aviation sector was ravaged by the pandemic and responding robustly to a sophisticated cyber-attack. Highly commended in this category was Emily Reichwald, general counsel of Dr Martens.
