In an article for The Mid-Market Report, author Richard Levick pushes back against some of the recent calls for broader disclosure of legal finance. Specifically, Levick notes:
“If a duty to disclose does mean documents must go to defendants, Burford is right: The same endless discovery, the same avalanche of motions and briefs that corporate defendants have typically unleashed to their advantage in traditional litigation, will become a tool to undermine the whole litigation funding industry… Fortunately for funders, they have some very recent and weighty precedent on their side, specifically Judge Dan Polster’s order, in the opioid MDL, that litigation funding details need only be disclosed to him in camera, simply in order to identify conflicts and ensure that the funder is not improperly involved with case management. Common sense does seem to support this position: The plaintiff’s financing arrangements, or even the possibility of a conflict on the part of the funder, are not directly pertinent to the actual substance of the lawsuit. Those finance details can neither support the defendant’s case nor compromise it.”