Minneapolis partner Mary Novacheck’s recent article,
Time for Sunshine on 3rd-Party Litigation Funding is published in
Law360.
In part, her article notes:
“On July 1, Wisconsin became the first state in the nation to require parties in lawsuits to disclose the use of an increasingly common and sometimes troubling aspect of the legal system: third-party litigation financing which is contingent on the outcome of cases.
While the efforts of individual states and federal courts to shed more light on these funding arrangements are laudable, thus far they provide only a patchwork system that fails to impose consistent disclosure requirements for all federal civil cases. That’s why many now believe that the Federal Rules, which govern all civil cases in the federal system, need to be changed to require that nonparties with a financial interest in the outcome of the litigation should be disclosed. A special subcommittee of the Federal Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure is now weighing whether a litigation disclosure rule should be added to the Federal Rules, and a decision is expected in the coming months.”
The full article can be viewed
here.
This article is written in conjunction with Lawyers for Civil Justice, a national coalition of defense trial lawyer organizations, law firms, and corporations that promotes excellence and fairness in the civil justice system to secure the just, speedy, and inexpensive determination of civil cases. Mary Novacheck is on the Board of Directors for Lawyers for Civil Justice.