Reviews
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2230.00382 |
| Date | 01 March 2002 |
| Published date | 01 March 2002 |
REVIEWS
Christopher Hodges,Multi-Party Actions, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001,
xlii + 564 pp, hb £95.00.
In December 1996, litigation concerning the use of Benzodiazepine tranquillisers
was discontinued following the striking-out of all outstanding claims against the
defendant manufacturers. The claimant group by this time had been whittled down to
fewer than 100 of the more than 17,000 who had initially instructed solicitors. The
main reason for the litigation’s collapse was the decision of the Legal Aid Board to
withdraw its funding in 1994 after a number of individual actions had been struck out.
Notwithstanding the Board’s decision, the total cost of the litigation to the Legal Aid
Fund exceeded £40 million, and the whole episode was described by Brooke LJ in the
Court of Appeal as an ‘expensive disaster’ (AB & Others vJohn Wyeth & Brother Ltd
[1997] Med LR 57 at 74). More recently, in 1999, victims of smoking-induced lung
cancer gave up their attempts to recover compensation from the tobacco companies –
this time the catalyst was an adverse High Court finding on the issue of limitation.
Most of the 50 or so claims that had been brought were promptly abandoned, and the
outstanding claims were subsequently dismissed with costs. The litigation had been
commenced in 1992, and in its initial stages was supported by the Legal Aid Board.
But, after the withdrawal of Legal Aid certificates in 1996, the principal law firm
involved in the litigation decided to continue on a conditional fee basis. When the
litigation collapsed in 1999, the firm was reported to have spent £2.5 million of its
own resources on the case. One is entitled to ask whether there has been any
significant improvement in the procedures for handling group claims since the time
of the Thalidomide fiasco of the sixties and early-seventies.
According to Hodges, such litigation histories show the need for active but flexible
judicial management of group litigation. The alternative is to let claims with little
prospect of ultimate success drift aimlessly through the courts, building up unrealistic
expectations on the part of claimants and putting defendants to unnecessary expense.
Thankfully, from the time of the pertussis and opren litigation of the 1980s, courts
and legal practitioners have demonstrated a willingness to look for innovative
solutions to the problems of multi-party actions, and the list of costly failures is now
balanced by a number of conspicuous successes which establish models for group
litigation in the future.
The author, a practising solicitor, states that his primary purpose ‘is to provide
guidance to those involved in the management of a multi-party action on the
procedural rules and techniques which may be used and the issues which may arise’
(p 3). But this is certainly not a dry practitioners’ handbook. The book’s intended
readership includes judges as well as lawyers (p 8), and it presents a wide-ranging
review of policy documents, empirical research and academic commentary on the
operation of the tort system. The book is divided into four sections. First, under the
heading ‘Managing Group Litigation’, Hodges sets out the choices facing litigators
and judges at various stages of a group action, from its initiation to the award of costs
on its resolution. Then, in a section entitled ‘Funding Multi-Party Actions’, he
surveys the sources of funding available to claimant groups in the wake of the
curtailment of Civil Legal Aid in actions for negligence (but not, as Hodges notes (p
186), for strict product liability under the Consumer Protection Act 1987). The major
ßThe Modern Law Review Limited 2002 (MLR 65:2, March). Published by Blackwell Publishers,
108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.304
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