Third Party Litigation Funding A Comparative Analysis

It is since a few years that a series of financially endowed and legally sophisticated entities purport to relieve the parties to a dispute from the costs and risks of litigation in change for a percentage of the recovery, only in case of victory, sometimes even transferring the claim. This new business practice is now commonly referred to as ‘Third Party Litigation Funding’ ('TPLF'), and it is often mentioned in relation to the emergence of a market in litigation. TPLF has emerged recently in the aftermath of the financial crisis mainly in some common law jurisdictions, although it is slowly expanding also in the civil law ones. For these reasons this practice has so far not yet received wide attention in the literature and, probably also because of the confidentiality that covers such transactions, in the professional sphere. Building on the existing literature, this thesis aims at shedding come light on the current law and practice of TPLF, in both common law and civil law jurisdictions. It does so by tracing the history that various practices to fund litigation have followed, and analyzing in detail the legal facts surrounding this practice in the jurisdictions where it has emerged more significantly.