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Third party funding: the minimum claim value. (English) Zbl 1490.91098

Summary: Third Party Funding (TPF) is an agreement between a claimant and a funder, where the funder provides money to pursue or defend a lawsuit in return for a financial reward, usually a percentage of the sum recovered by the claimant. TPF is a useful tool to improve access to justice and through which the funded party can better allocate its financial resources. It is widely used in international arbitration and, in some countries, even in domestic litigation and arbitration. Many factors affect the decision of funding a lawsuit, in the first place its value, which has to be high enough to justify funder’s allocation of capital. In this paper, we analize litigation from the certainty equivalent perspective and provide interpretation on how differences between the parties may affect the size of the pie. Furthermore, we formalize TPF and – considering Italian costs, cost shifting rules and length of trials – derive a formula to compute the minimum value of a claim suitable for the funding agreement. Finally we use the formula to provide estimates for three-stage proceedings before two jurisdictions with different length of proceedings.

MSC:

91B16 Utility theory
91B32 Resource and cost allocation (including fair division, apportionment, etc.)
91G80 Financial applications of other theories
Full Text: DOI

References:

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