Your November Legal Funding News Roundup

The Headlines

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Google Faces a Fresh Privacy Class Action Suit over Tracking iPhone Safari Users 

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Therium contributed £15.5 Million to a U.K. class action against Google. The claim is based on the allegation that Google unlawfully harvested information by planting cookies to track users' internet behavior in order to serve ads. 

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Read on: iPhone users should be given compensation from Google, new lawsuit claims

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How Jones Day Unmasks a Litigation Funding Deal and Won

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Curious what the Therium finance agreement might look like? Well, you're in luck! At the end of October, documents were released for a separate Therium-backed class action, this time against Chevron. View the agreement here. 

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Could a litigation finance initiative capitalize on #MeToo?

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Legalist stays in the news this month by launching an initiative called "#MeToo Tales." The legal funding startup invited individuals who believe that they have been victims of sexual harassment in the workplace to share their stories confidentially on the initiative's website or via a hotline. 

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Leandra English not funding lawsuit against Trump Administration

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This will be an interesting one to keep your eyes on, as it appears that the legal funding industry has now collided with the Trump administration. In the short video above, when asked how he is being paid, Deepak Gupta, attorney for Leandra English, revealed that  "Well, uh, it's, uh, it's not, um, uh Miss, uh, English, uh-um, there are ethics lawyers we've consulted and we have a structure set up that complies with ethics rules."

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Read more here.  

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Medical Funding

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Tennessee Supreme Court defines 'reasonable charges' in personal injury lawsuits

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The Tennessee Supreme Court declined to change the law on what evidence can be used to prove medical expenses in personal injury cases.The Court held that Tennessee law continues to allow plaintiffs to use full, undiscounted medical bills to prove their medical expenses instead of the discounted amounts paid by insurance companies.

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Read on - Tennessee Supreme Court Clarifies Law on Proof of Medical Expenses in Personal Injury Cases  

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Plaintiff Funding

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Finance Comes to the World of Litigation

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Michael McDonald opines on the growth of legal funding and argues that the "law" and "finance" components of legal funding need to be separated when assessing the product as a whole. He explains the function of finance is to enable industries to function more efficiently by through increased access to goods (whether they be legal services, cars, or houses), whereas law is morality-based, and that this sense of morality is often erroneously impressed on legal funding.

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Litigation Finance Investors Expanding Their Reach - Medical and plaintiff funding was a hot topic at the 2017 Risk Management Summit, an annual conference the small and mid-market risk management and insurance industries. 

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Growth in Litigation Funding

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This is a (very) short one, but it poses an interesting question: Just how big can the litigation finance industry get? Two competing factors identified are the large sums of money raised by funders that subsequently need to be deployed and outstanding legal questions of transparency.  

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Odds & Ends

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• Litigation Funding Changes Legal Landscape for Boutique and Small Firms
• Why Insurers Target Mid-Market Litigation
• Compliance & ethics in litigation finance
• British Columbia Law Institute: Study Paper on Financing Litigation