Thursday 14 August 2008

UK: England and Wales: collective action recommendations

The Civil Justice Council has published a report titled "Improving Access to Justice through Collective Actions - Developing a More Efficient and Effective Procedure for Collective Actions: a Series of Recommendations to the Lord Chancellor". Amongst the recommendations - which concern civil procedure in England and Wales - are the following:
  • A generic collective action should be introduced. Individual and discrete collective actions could also properly be introduced in the wider civil context i.e., before the CAT or the Employment Tribunal to complement the generic civil collective action. 
  • Collective claims should be capable of being brought by a wide range of representative parties: individual representative claimants or defendants, designated bodies, and ad hoc bodies. 
  • No collective claim should be permitted to proceed unless it is certified by the court as being suitable to proceed as such. Certification should be subject to a strict certification procedure. 

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