ENGLAND & WALES Law and Practice Contributed by: Damian Taylor, Olga Ladrowska, Christy Conlon and Nathan Barrow, Slaughter and May
To enforce a foreign award under the New York Con- vention 1958, a party should follow the procedure set out in the Arbitration Act 1996. This requires the enforcing party to produce the duly authenticated award or a duly certified copy of the award and the original arbitration agreement or a duly certified copy of it. If an award is in a foreign language, a certified translation of it should also be produced. Enforcement of a New York Convention award may be resisted on the limited grounds set out in the New York Conven- tion 1958 or on public policy grounds. 14. Outlook 14.1 Proposals for Dispute Resolution Reform As explained in 2.1 Third-Party Litigation Funding , a government-commissioned report into third-party liti- gation funding was published in June 2025. The review was prompted by rapid growth in the litigation funding market (which was traditionally heavily restricted in England and Wales due to concerns about preserv- ing the integrity of the justice system) and a Supreme Court decision in July 2023 ( R (PACCAR) v Competi- tion Appeal Tribunal ) that created uncertainty about the enforceability of litigation funding agreements. In response to these issues, the report recommended additional regulation of the sector. The key proposals included reversing the Supreme Court decision noted above, replacing the current voluntary self-regulatory regime for funders with a statutory framework super- vised by the government, simplifying existing rules on DBAs and CFAs (as defined in 2.6 Contingency Fees ) through a single statutory regime, and increas- ing scrutiny of portfolio funding (where funders finance law firms directly across multiple cases).
Implementing these changes will require legislation. The government has not yet published its formal response. 14.2 Growth Areas Group claims and class actions have undergone rapid development and expansion in recent years, fuelled in large part by the introduction of an opt-out class action regime for competition law claims in 2015 (see 3.7 Representative or Collective Actions ) and the rise of third-party funding (see 2. Litigation Funding ). Claimant law firms’ and litigation funders’ confidence in the competition class action regime is evident from the large number of claims filed in the Competition Appeal Tribunal in recent years, although high-pro- file recent cases have highlighted tension between funders’ returns and the compensation ultimately received by claimants. Crucially, developments are not limited to the com- petition sphere. Group claims and class actions are becoming an increasingly attractive and feasible means of redress across a broad range of sectors and in relation to a variety of issues. For example, the past few years have seen a substantial rise in the number of mass tort claims being brought in relation to ESG issues. There has also been an increase in the number of securities actions alleging inaccurate statements in information disclosed by listed issuers to the market. This growth trend is expected to continue (particularly if the government reverses the Supreme Court’s PAC- CAR decision, as explained in 14.1 Proposals for Dis- pute Resolution Reform ), with claimant law firms and activists finding innovative ways to bring group claims and class actions using the existing legal frameworks.
296 CHAMBERS.COM
Powered by FlippingBook