{"id":73249,"date":"2020-11-30T11:58:20","date_gmt":"2020-11-30T11:58:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/clientdemoweb.com\/wickerhamilton\/?p=73249"},"modified":"2020-11-30T12:00:22","modified_gmt":"2020-11-30T12:00:22","slug":"class-action-lawsuits-in-the-eu-a-balancing-act","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/clientdemoweb.com\/wickerhamilton\/class-action-lawsuits-in-the-eu-a-balancing-act\/","title":{"rendered":"Class Action Lawsuits in the EU: A Balancing Act"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cPerfectly balanced, as all things should be.\u201d – Thanos, Avengers: Infinity War<\/strong><\/p>\n

Although most government bodies would not use Marvel\u2019s Thanos as an inspiration, the EU appears to be taking into account some of the villain\u2019s core philosophy in its approach towards class action lawsuits. In the wake of several large corporate scandals, the European Parliament has recently endorsed legislation standardising EU citizens\u2019 right to file class actions. The intent of these lawsuits is to allow consumers to band together to seek justice from corporations; however, there is the possibility for corporations to be bombarded with frivolous litigation designed to squeeze money from them. Thus, the EU has to balance the consumers\u2019 right to fight back against unethical corporate actions with the corporation\u2019s right to not be encumbered by meaningless lawsuits.<\/p>\n

This issue of collective redress was brought to the forefront by recent corporate misconduct such as Volkswagen\u2019s \u201cDieselgate\u201d in 2015 and the 2018 data breaches at British Airways and Marriott. In all three instances, the settlement or fine that the corporations ultimately had to pay was significantly lower than what was initially expected. Because of cases such as these, the European Parliament has endorsed the Collective Redress Directive on 24 November which requires all EU members to offer their citizens at least one method for them to file class-action lawsuits. However, there are three distinct differences between EU class actions and their American counterparts.<\/p>\n

1. Unlike the United States, where private law firms are usually the ones to spearhead class action lawsuits, the EU\u2019s Directive will require such litigation to be brought by either a consumer organisation or some other qualified entity. These qualified entities must be nonprofits.
\n2. Only monetary \u201ccompensatory damages\u201d can be awarded; the purpose of this directive is not to punish large corporations through punitive damages, but rather to compensate the negatively affected consumers for the harm that they suffered.
\n3. All EU class-action lawsuits will have a \u201closer pays\u201d principle\u2014the party that loses, whether it is the corporation or the entity representing the consumers, is the one that pays the legal fees for both sides.<\/p>\n

These three differences help balance consumers\u2019 ability to seek redress while ensuring that any class action litigation is legitimate and not an attempt to abuse the system. The UK will not be required to follow the EU Directive due to Brexit, but if the new legislation becomes popular, it may encourage the UK to adopt something similar for its own citizens. Hopefully, when the Collective Redress Directive is officially enacted in two years, the rights of both consumers and corporations will be perfectly balanced, as all things should be.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cPerfectly balanced, as all things should be.\u201d – Thanos, Avengers: Infinity War Although most government bodies would not use Marvel\u2019s Thanos as an inspiration, the EU appears to be taking into account some of the villain\u2019s core philosophy in its approach towards class action lawsuits. In the wake of several large corporate scandals, the European […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":73250,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[91,4],"tags":[112,101,111,113,95,110,46],"yoast_head":"\nClass Action Lawsuits in the EU: A Balancing Act - Wicker Hamilton<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"\u201cPerfectly balanced, as all things should be.\u201d - Thanos, Avengers: Infinity War\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/clientdemoweb.com\/wickerhamilton\/class-action-lawsuits-in-the-eu-a-balancing-act\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Class Action Lawsuits in the EU: A Balancing Act - Wicker Hamilton\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"\u201cPerfectly balanced, as all things should be.\u201d - Thanos, Avengers: Infinity War\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/clientdemoweb.com\/wickerhamilton\/class-action-lawsuits-in-the-eu-a-balancing-act\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Wicker Hamilton\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2020-11-30T11:58:20+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2020-11-30T12:00:22+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/clientdemoweb.com\/wickerhamilton\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/autos-214033_1920.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1920\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"1440\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Est. reading time\">\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"2 minutes\">\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/clientdemoweb.com\/wickerhamilton\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/clientdemoweb.com\/wickerhamilton\/\",\"name\":\"Wicker Hamilton\",\"description\":\"\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":\"https:\/\/clientdemoweb.com\/wickerhamilton\/?s={search_term_string}\",\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/clientdemoweb.com\/wickerhamilton\/class-action-lawsuits-in-the-eu-a-balancing-act\/#primaryimage\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/clientdemoweb.com\/wickerhamilton\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/autos-214033_1920.jpg\",\"width\":1920,\"height\":1440},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/clientdemoweb.com\/wickerhamilton\/class-action-lawsuits-in-the-eu-a-balancing-act\/#webpage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/clientdemoweb.com\/wickerhamilton\/class-action-lawsuits-in-the-eu-a-balancing-act\/\",\"name\":\"Class Action Lawsuits in the EU: A Balancing Act - Wicker Hamilton\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/clientdemoweb.com\/wickerhamilton\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/clientdemoweb.com\/wickerhamilton\/class-action-lawsuits-in-the-eu-a-balancing-act\/#primaryimage\"},\"datePublished\":\"2020-11-30T11:58:20+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2020-11-30T12:00:22+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/clientdemoweb.com\/wickerhamilton\/#\/schema\/person\/466d3aef0904a7b00ff9a103f6bd26ed\"},\"description\":\"\\u201cPerfectly balanced, as all things should be.\\u201d - Thanos, Avengers: Infinity War\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/clientdemoweb.com\/wickerhamilton\/class-action-lawsuits-in-the-eu-a-balancing-act\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/clientdemoweb.com\/wickerhamilton\/#\/schema\/person\/466d3aef0904a7b00ff9a103f6bd26ed\",\"name\":\"Matthew\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/clientdemoweb.com\/wickerhamilton\/#personlogo\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/ccf0631a99f0788604552e106824f0f1?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Matthew\"}}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/clientdemoweb.com\/wickerhamilton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73249"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/clientdemoweb.com\/wickerhamilton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/clientdemoweb.com\/wickerhamilton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clientdemoweb.com\/wickerhamilton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clientdemoweb.com\/wickerhamilton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73249"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/clientdemoweb.com\/wickerhamilton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73249\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":73251,"href":"https:\/\/clientdemoweb.com\/wickerhamilton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73249\/revisions\/73251"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clientdemoweb.com\/wickerhamilton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/73250"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/clientdemoweb.com\/wickerhamilton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clientdemoweb.com\/wickerhamilton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clientdemoweb.com\/wickerhamilton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}