Class Actions

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New Product Liability Laws Coming to EU – Update for Life Sciences Companies

The EU is currently overhauling its product liability laws. Prompted by the perceived risks of new technologies and a desire to make it easier for claimants to bring claims for medical device and pharmaceutical claims, the changes represent a major shift in the litigation landscape in the EU. They will have a profound effect for life sciences companies, especially when taken together with the EU’s new class actions mechanisms. As a result, businesses need to prepare for an increase in the already growing trend of EU consumer claims against life sciences manufacturers and suppliers.

New EU Class Actions Mechanisms to be Implemented by Christmas

New laws allowing groups of EU consumers to launch class actions against traders are to be implemented by 25 December 2022 and will apply from June next year. The EU’s Representative Actions Directive (EU) 2020/1828 represents a major overhaul of the European class actions landscape, introducing mechanisms for group litigation in every one of the EU’s 27 Member States, alongside a new cross-border mechanism for class actions.

What Are You Implying?

In Yoo Design Services Ltd v Iliv Realty PTE Ltd the Court of Appeal has, once again, shown itself to be averse to exercising the ‘extraordinary power’ to intervene in a contract by implying a term in anything other than the most clear-cut cases. While it is understandable that claimants, in the absence of any helpful express terms, make claims based on the implication of terms, a party doing so must appreciate the height of the hurdle to be cleared.