IBA Annual Litigation Forum: New Challenges in Multijurisdictional Litigation, 6-8 May 2020, Buenos Aires

IBA_BAThis time last year, I was still quite nerveous about getting everything lined up for the IBA’s Annual Litigation Forum in Berlin which I had the honour of co-charing. This year, I can sit back, relax and plan my trip to Argentina, knowing that things are in the capable hands of our friends Angelo Anglani and Rodrigo Fermin Garcia. Continue reading

Cases of the Week: How (Not) To Bundle Claims

Landgericht BraunschweigGermany does not have US style class actions. The introduction of the Capital Market Investors’ Model Proceeding Act (Kapitalanlegermusterverfahrensgesetz, KapMuG) in 2005 (triggered by the Deutsche Telekom securities litigation) and of the Model Declaratory Proceedings (Musterfeststellungsklage) that were added to the German Code of Civil Procedure (ZPO) in November 2018 in order to address the wave of Diesel litigation have not really changed that. In the assessment of the plaintiffs’ bar, Germany’s legal tools for seeking collective redress are still not fit for purpose. Continue reading

Happy New Year!

abschluss_feuerwerk_volksfest_aschaffenburg_2014_14374094338Dear readers, thank you for your interest in this blog during the last year! Let me start 2017 by wishing all of you a happy New Year, both professionally and privately. Also, I would like to take the opportunity to look back at 2016. Continue reading

Porsche/Volkswagen Litigation: Moving Slowly, One Step At A Time…

olg-celle

We have not really covered the Porsche/Volkswagen saga for quite a long time – see here and here for posts on the jurisdictional journey of this litigation all across the country. Primarily, this was because not a lot has happened: Back in April 2014, the District Court (Landgericht) Hannover had published its order commencing a model proceeding (Musterverfahren) to be heard by the Court of Appeals (Oberlandesgericht) Celle (the order is available via the electronic register for model proceedings operated by the Federal Gazette at www.bundesanzeiger.de). Continue reading