International Group Litigation

We have a well-established and highly regarded International Group Litigation practice and have been instructed in many of the leading actions over the past 25 years.

Due to the nature of the disputes generally at the heart of group litigation, there is much overlap with the barristers’ work in private international law, as well as with specialist areas of practice such as business human rights, product liability, personal injury, professional negligence, healthcare, sport and environmental law.

Many of our international group matters relate to business and human rights where we represent claimants and defendants in very high-profile public interest cases, seeking to preserve the balance between State and individual rights, and we are regularly instructed by UK and overseas governments, public authorities, insurers, communities and global corporations. The issues raised are often complex, including difficult questions of conflict of laws, tort, limitation, parent company liability, contribution and claims handling. Our barristers have worked on many of the leading cases including the African Minerals litigation, the Shell litigation/Okpabi, Vedanta, the Kenyan Emergency Group Litigation (Mau Mau), the Cyprus Emergency Litigation, Iraqi Civilians Litigation and the PGI Litigation. We also acted on the important litigation arising out of the alleged abuses of child migrants to Australia and Rhodesia in the 1950’s and 1960’s.

We are often called on to deal with specialist practice area related group actions. Chambers has an outstanding reputation in several areas that are inclined to give rise to these collective actions, such as product liability, especially in relation to clinical and pharmaceutical products, automotive products and other issues of professional negligence. Members have been involved in many of the high-profile matters subject to group litigation orders in recent years such as Corin and DePuy metal on metal hip replacement surgery, PIP breast implants and the VW emissions.

Our barristers are routinely instructed to act on other ‘series of claims’ where disputes involving numerous claims and multiple parties are allocated to a certain Court and judge so that the matters are dealt with concurrently and with shared reference. This includes a number of high-profile examples in the Healthcare sector such as litigation against Oculentis in relation to intraocular lenses, various multi-party surgical mesh disputes and claims regarding sterilisation implants, with all these matters including hundreds of claimants.

The rise of duty of care and negligence group litigation claims in Sport, against various regulatory and governing bodies, has seen the Sports team at 2TG instructed by World Rugby in relation the alleged mismanagement of concussion and subsequent association with early onset dementia.