Survey Shows Increases In Class Action Case Numbers, Corporate Litigation Budgets Spent On Class Actions, And In-House Counsel Time Spent On Them, With Labor/Employment And Consumer Fraud Actions Leading The Class Action Pack.
The 2025 Carlton Fields Class Action Survey, which is publicly available, has just been issued. It has interesting trends for class actions, especially enlightening for class action defense attorneys and their clients. Here are the highlights:
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- Defense spending and the expected number of class actions hit a new record, a tenth straight year of growth. Spending on class actions accounted for 12.5% of corporate litigation budgets, surpassing $4 billion—up from 12.3% last year.
- In-house counsel added the equivalent of one additional workday per week to manage class actions, with class action filings forecast to increase 20%.
- Two-thirds of corporate counsel participating in the survey expect new class actions to arise after the use of generative AI.
- Labor/employment and consumer fraud class actions are expected to lead the next class action wave.
- Fewer companies use insurance to combat exposure to these cases, although they are implementing risk aversion techniques and many times are using mandatory arbitration clauses/class action waivers.
- Companies settling class actions are asking for reversion clauses with respect to unclaimed settlement amounts, and cy pres features in settlement have dropped to zero recently.
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