Multi-Jurisdictional Disputes – IBA Annual Litigation Forum, May 9 – 11, 2012, New York, NY

May I draw your attention to this conference, presented by the IBA Litigation Committee and the IBA Corporate Counsel Forum. Judge Rakoff will be our key note speaker. I will be one of the panellists on the topic of “extraterritorial reach of domestic law in cross-border litigation.” It would be great to see you in New York next May! Continue reading

Update: Third-Party Litigation Funding: Movements in the German Marketplace

In last week’s post on third-party litigation funding, I had been speculating about ERGO’s plans for its recently re-branded litigation funding business, Legial. Perhaps I was not the only one:

Today’s Handelsblatt – unfortunately only in the print version, page 36, not available online to non-subscribers – reports that ERGO has no plans to exit the business, as Allianz have done. Quite to the contrary: The paper quotes Legial’s Thomas Kohlmeier as saying that ERGO plans to triple the volume of litigation funding business over the next three years.

German Mediation Act Takes First Hurdle

Yesterday, the Mediation Act was passed, by an unanimous vote, in the “lower chamber” of the German parliament, by the Bundestag, in the form previously reported here. The consent of the “upper chamber”, the Bundesrat, representing the Federal States, is still outstanding and not yet certain. The matter is on the Bundesrat’s agenda in February 2012. Continue reading