Class Actions Law Guide

We are delighted to have been invited to contribute to this timely new guide on class actions. Between us, we have experienced first-hand the rapid growth in class actions and collective redress litigation in Europe from both sides of the fence: advising both claimants and defendants, working with litigation funders, and navigating some of the difficult procedural steps that collective proceedings present to practitioners (where the implementation of the legal framework often seems to be trying to catch up to innovations and increasing demand).

In editing this guide it has been fascinating for us to review the contributions of other practitioners and to learn more about the status of class actions in other jurisdictions. Doing so has helped us reflect on what might well be coming down the tracks towards us. We hope you find this guide as informative and useful as we have.

“Class action” or “collective redress” or “group litigation” or…

As you will have seen, we have adopted the term “class action” in the title of this guide and, for ease of use, we have decided to use that and collective redress fairly interchangeably throughout to describe what is (in some jurisdictions) a whole host of different forms of collective redress mechanisms. We apologise to all purists in advance for this!

What this guide is… and what this guide is not!

It is no exaggeration to say that class actions have become one of the most consequential developments in civil justice globally. Certainly they are one of the most talked about.

This guide in no way sets out to map each and every jurisdiction in which class actions or other forms of collective proceedings can be brought — the field is now too wide for that to be very practical within a single volume. We therefore mean no disrespect to any jurisdiction with a class action regime that is not represented within these pages. We and Global Legal Post look forward to having future contributions from expert practitioners from a range of other jurisdictions in the second edition of the guide.

What the guide does try to offer the reader is an introduction to many of the key jurisdictions with developed (or developing) class action regimes: from North America (U.S. and Canada) to South America (Brazil); from the United Kingdom and the European Union, to Asia and Australia. Together, these chapters provide a genuinely international practical viewpoint of a legal landscape that is changing rapidly and unevenly but which is here to stay.

This guide has not been written from an academic legal standpoint, but rather from the perspective of legal practitioners at firms where class actions are an important part of their practice. It is designed to be both practical and accessible: a resource for in-house counsel, disputes practitioners, litigation funders, and anyone else with a professional interest in quickly understanding a framework for how collective redress works within a particular jurisdiction (and what that may mean for clients or for their business). A reader who is new to class actions in a particular jurisdiction should be able to turn to the relevant chapter and quickly get to grips with answers to many of the questions that matter most: What mechanisms exist? Who has standing to bring a claim? Can the litigation be funded? What remedies are available? How long will proceedings take?

For all the jurisdictions covered by the guide, contributors have provided answers to questions in a full question-and-answer format. These address the key features of the relevant class action regime. For a handful of other jurisdictions — namely, England & Wales, Germany, Ireland and the United States — the country chapter also includes a “Market Insights” overview, focusing on significant recent developments or trends in that particular jurisdiction.

A short history of a “gift” from the United States

The story of class actions is very much an American story. The U.S. “class action” — principally via Rule 23 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure — has been a feature of the civil justice landscape in the U.S. for over half a century and represents the most developed and extensively litigated collective redress system in the world. It has produced what is now a mature body of jurisprudence, a well-established litigation funding industry and a cadre of specialist plaintiffs’ firms and defence practices for whom class action work is a core practice area (or in some cases, the entire business model).

For better or worse, the U.S. model — with its opt-out mechanism, its discovery obligations and potential for wide ranging and large-scale settlements— has been the reference point by which all other countries have needed to define their own approach to collective redress. The scale and value of the U.S. class action market remains impressive: in 2025, U.S. courts granted class certification at a rate of approximately 68% — broadly consistent with the two previous years — and the value of the 10 largest settlements in 2025 far exceeded comparable figures for both 2024 and 2023. Some jurisdictions have embraced many of the constituent parts of the U.S. class actions model, while others have only tentatively dipped their toes into the water to see what works for them. Others still have quite deliberately and publicly defined themselves against parts of the U.S. class regime, usually because of concerns about opening the ‘floodgates’ or having their courts overwhelmed with potentially costly and time-consuming litigation.

Whether this trajectory for U.S. class actions will continue is unclear. A notable pressure point for the regime is the growing use of mandatory arbitration clauses by U.S. corporations to try to route disputes away from collective proceedings entirely, thus requiring plaintiffs to pursue individual arbitration claims in place of class litigation — a trend that is considered further in the U.S. chapter of this guide.

Over time, jurisdictions such as Canada and Australia developed their own (now mature) class action regimes, that share much of the U.S. framework’s underlying logic, while reflecting their own common law traditions and policy choices. Both Canada and Australia have well-established certification processes, judicial benches with a wealth of experience of collective redress, and active plaintiff and defence bars. Both are now going through interesting growth cycles of their own, as discussed in the respective chapters on those jurisdictions.

Elsewhere internationally, the picture is of rapid but uneven development in the constituent parts of class action regimes and their attendant infrastructure. The global spread of class actions is real — but it is still far from uniform, and understanding the differences between systems is as important as understanding what they share in common. By way of just a few examples:

• In the United Kingdom, the collective proceedings landscape has grown considerably in the last decade and continues to evolve at pace: more than 60 collective proceedings are currently before the Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT), and 125 Group Litigation Orders have now been granted by the High Court of England and Wales as at March 2026. However, it has not just been plain sailing of late. In December 2025, the UK Government announced its intention to reverse the UK Supreme Court’s decision in PACCAR Inc v. Competition Appeal Tribunal [2023] UKSC 28, which cast doubt on the enforceability of litigation funding agreements structured as a percentage of damages, and to introduce proportionate regulation of third-party litigation funding. However, collective redress practitioners in the UK will need to be patient for this process to complete. The UK Government has also launched a review of the CAT’s opt-out collective proceedings regime, and calls to extend that beyond competition law are gaining traction, though the outcome currently remains uncertain for users of the CAT.
• Across the European Union (the EU), the transposition of the Representative Actions Directive has prompted reform in every EU Member State, with results that vary considerably in ambition and design. The Netherlands stands out as one of the most developed and internationally active collective redress jurisdictions in the EU, although final outcomes are awaited in many of the key class action cases brought there. The Dutch WAMCA regime (the Wet Afwikkeling Massaschade in Collectieve Actie, or Act on the Resolution of Mass Claims in Collective Actions), which came into force in January 2020 and introduced the possibility of claiming collective damages on an opt-out basis, has attracted both domestic and cross-border claims, with the Netherlands’ courts emerging as something of an EU forum for securities, data privacy, environmental and competition claims. In December 2025, the Amsterdam District Court handed down its first significant merits judgment under the WAMCA, in proceedings concerning Allergan breast implants — an important milestone for the regime.
• In Asia, jurisdictions from Israel to South Korea have developed their own collective redress frameworks shaped by their distinct legal traditions and policy concerns. South Korea’s regime remains narrow in scope: its only statutory class action mechanism, the Securities-Related Class Action Act of 2004, is limited to capital markets disputes and has been used in only around eleven cases since its introduction. Multiple legislative attempts to broaden the South Korean regime to consumer protection and data privacy have so far failed in the face of opposition, especially from business lobbies, though a major data breach at e-commerce company Coupang in late 2025 — reportedly affecting nearly 33.7 million accounts — has reinvigorated the calls for reform, with new legislative proposals introduced in December 2025.
• In South America, Brazil has a mature and expansive collective action framework, one that is rooted in constitutional protections and a broad public interest litigation tradition. We hope to include chapters on other South American jurisdictions in the next edition.

Common themes

Trying to identify common themes across jurisdictions spanning the four corners of the world is difficult, but some themes do recur in the jurisdictions covered in this guide:

• Litigation funding is central to the viability of collective redress cases — but is simultaneously the subject of intensifying regulatory scrutiny, as legislators and courts grapple with the tension between enabling access to justice and preventing the distortion of claimant interests by commercially motivated funders. The UK’s PACCAR saga is a visible example: a Supreme Court ruling that destabilised the maturing UK funding market has now prompted a government commitment to legislative intervention, with a programme of proportionate regulation set to follow. In the Netherlands, the WAMCA regime already imposes governance requirements on claim organisations in an attempt to ensure funders cannot override the interests of those they represent.
• The opt-in versus opt-out debate remains alive in almost every jurisdiction covered in the guide: for example, the Netherlands operates a dual mechanism (opt-out for domestic claimants, opt-in for foreign ones), while the UK’s Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT) exercises discretion on a case-by-case basis.
• Standing rules — or procedural systems that determine who may bring a collective claim in the first place, and in what capacity — vary enormously and reveal much about each jurisdiction’s underlying legal philosophy: U.S. rules require an individual representative plaintiff; Dutch rules restricts standing to foundations and associations; and the UK CAT allows for a class representative who does not themselves even need to be a claimant.
• The subject matter of collective proceedings continues to broaden as innovative plaintiff lawyers try to open up new areas: while competition damages sought for anti-competitive or abusive actions, and consumer protection and financial services mis-selling claims remain dominant categories, data protection, ESG and environmental harm claims are growing rapidly. Securities litigation, which has increasingly migrated from the U.S. to EU courts following restrictions on the extra-territorial reach of U.S. securities law, is a very active area in both the United Kingdom and the Netherlands and can be expected to grow elsewhere.

What is clear is that for businesses operating across borders, the developments in class actions internationally demand attention. The risk of an international business facing collective proceedings (including in one or more of the jurisdictions covered in this guide) is real and should not be underestimated. The chapters that follow are designed to help practitioners and their clients understand that risk — and if it arises, to navigate it effectively.

And finally, a word of thanks!

We are hugely grateful for the contributions and shared wisdom and experience of our fellow contributors, which number many colleagues or professional acquaintances of long standing, and all of whom are first rate practitioners in class actions and collective redress in their jurisdictions. They have put so much time and effort into helping produce the content for this guide. We would also like to thank the team at Global Legal Post, who not only invited us to co-edit the guide, but who kept the train on the tracks over the months needed to produce the guide that you now hold in your hands (or have open on your screen).

Sarah-Jane Dobson would like to thank Thomas Panter, Katrin Ruhl, Miran Bahra, Antonia Menke and Brooke Driscoll of Ashurst for their help throughout the process. Guy Robson would like to give particular thanks to Callum Walters of Pogust Goodhead for his contributions and support throughout the process as well as Karina and Beatrice for their support.