Chris Merritt of The Australian writes that efforts to regulate the litigation funding industry is “finally exposing the great lie that has crippled all previous attempts at reform.”
Policymakers, according to Merritt, “have swallowed the line that they were involved in the noble cause of increasing access to justice.”
That argument, he writes, “wrongly assumes” that anything that increases the overall amount of litigation must be good; and, it “ignores the harsh reality” that anyone “who signs up with a litigation funder is buying a financial service from an unregulated supplier.”
“The pieces,” writes Merritt, “are slowly falling into place for a long overdue change.”
That’s because Federal Attorney-General George Brandis now has a report on this subject from the Productivity Commission “and a detailed paper from a group affiliated with the US Chamber of Commerce” (Institute For Legal Reform).
