SWITZERLAND Law and Practice Contributed by: Annemarie Lagger and Amina Chammah, Walder Wyss Ltd
Contingency Fee Agreements “No win, no fee” and contingency fee agreements are not permitted under Swiss law since they are considered to stand in contradiction to the counsel’s obligations to act independently. According to the Swiss Federal Supreme Court, the attorney’s rules of professional conduct require a base salary, which does not only cover the attorney’s costs but must also guarantee a certain profit. Only if this precondition is met may the parties agree on an additional success fee element in the sense of a top-up fee. Legal Aid Legal aid is available (mostly) for private individu - als under the preconditions that (i) the requesting party does not have the funds to finance the pro - ceedings, and (ii) the case is not devoid of any chance of success. The request must be placed with the same court that is also deciding on the merits. The court will decide on the request in a formal, preliminary proceeding, during which the requesting party must fully disclose its financial situation and state its position on the merits. If legal aid is granted, the applicant is relieved from the obligation to pay any court costs (including any advance on costs) and the state will cover any reasonable lawyer’s fees. Legal aid does, however, not relieve the applicant from the obli - gation to pay party compensation to the oppos - Since the threshold for receiving legal aid is high and the costs for initiating proceedings are con - siderable, legal protection insurance is becom - ing increasingly common among consumers. Even standard insurance packages include a legal protection policy. While the conditions of such policies vary significantly and most insur - ance policies tend to avoid litigation and to set - tle potential disputes, it is, however, difficult to ing party in the case of defeat. Legal Protection Insurance
quantify the impact of legal protection insurance on product liability claims. 2.16 Existence of Class Actions, Representative Proceedings or Co- Ordinated Proceedings in Product Liability Claims There are no real collective redress procedures in Switzerland. However, it is possible to jointly bring several claims (eg, by a number of claim - ants filing their claims together when there are similar facts and legal grounds) in one proceed - ing or by way of an assignment of the individual claims to a claimant party. However, since this is usually cumbersome, it is rarely used. When the general revision of the Swiss Civil Pro - cedure Code was initiated in 2018, it included proposals to introduce certain collective redress mechanisms. However, the proposed amend - ments triggered so many debates that the Fed - eral Council decided to split them off and to deal with them in a separate revision project in order not to jeopardise the broader revision process. Such a separate revision project is currently being examined by parliament. The bill includes measures aimed at introducing collective redress mechanisms to enhance access to justice for groups of affected individuals, particularly in are - as such as consumer and environmental protec - tion. These measures are seen as a shift towards a more collective approach to legal redress in Switzerland, aligning with similar developments in other jurisdictions. However, on 18 October 2024, the National Council’s Committee for Legal Affairs (RK-N) voted not to consider the bill on collective legal protection. The committee came to the conclusion that the proposed instru - ments of collective redress were not compatible with the Swiss legal system. Rather, in the eyes of the majority of the committee, the bill carried
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