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Issacharoff, Samuel; Miller, Geoffrey P. --- "Will Aggregate Litigation Come to Europe?" [2012] ELECD 303; in Backhaus, G. Jürgen; Cassone, Alberto; Ramello, B. Giovanni (eds), "The Law and Economics of Class Actions in Europe" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2012)

Book Title: The Law and Economics of Class Actions in Europe

Editor(s): Backhaus, G. Jürgen; Cassone, Alberto; Ramello, B. Giovanni

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781847208033

Section: Chapter 4

Section Title: Will Aggregate Litigation Come to Europe?

Author(s): Issacharoff, Samuel; Miller, Geoffrey P.

Number of pages: 32

Extract:

4. Will aggregate litigation come to
Europe?
Samuel Issacharoff and Geoffrey P. Miller

The current wave of deregulation and market liberalization in Europe has
had major repercussions for the prospect of litigated forms of collective
redress. Once decried as the perversity of rapacious Americans, class
actions are now the focus of significant reform efforts in many European
countries and even at the level of the European Union. There are, no doubt,
many reasons for the relatively sudden attention to means of collective
redress. Some have to do with the need to create effective ex post account-
ability mechanisms to contain the potential adverse effects of goods and
services freely entering the market. Others seek to create mechanisms for
efficient resolution of the numerous intertwined claims that invariably arise
from the mass production and delivery of goods and services across a broad
market.
One should not gainsay the significance of these reform measures. All
represent efforts to mobilize means of private enforcement to foster preven-
tion through the prospect of civil litigation. For countries steeped in the
civil law tradition, the move away from centralized public enforcement is a
sea change in legal structures. The marriage of private enforcement mecha-
nisms and relaxed barriers to entry into increasingly deregulated markets is
a significant change as well. Add to that the diversity of litigation tools that
are being developed and one would have to be almost churlish not to marvel
at the liberalizing spirit sweeping the Continent.
And, yet, one need spend ...