FOREWORD: EUROPE - COLLECTIVE REDRESS - OPTING OUT APPROACH
Opting-in to opting-out: Why collective redress in Europe should adopt the opt-out approach to class actions
The author explains in this foreword why collective redress in Europe should adopt the opt-out approach to class actions. He holds that class action litigation serves important interests for both plaintiffs and defendants, but many of the benefits will not be realized in the absence of opt-out approaches to collective redress.
The European Commission’s Consultation on Collective Redress as well as its Green and White Papers on damages actions for violations of EU antitrust rules [1] raise the prospect that EU-wide legislation may be forthcoming in either a narrow, vertical approach (such as damages provisions for breach of antitrust rules) or a broader, more horizontal approach in a variety of areas of consumer law – or both. While collective consumer redress covers none-judicial dispute resolution in the form of Alternative Dispute Resolution, it is likely also to cover judicial collective redress in the form of collective or group actions, what Americans refer to as “class actions”.
In Europe, American-style class actions have a bad reputation, although it is no longer much deserved, if it ever was. Most of
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