Medicine reviews its difficult cases through morbidity and mortality conferences. Aviation studies its failures through the NTSB. Engineering studies its collapses. Litigation finance, by contrast, has had no comparable practice of examining its own difficult cases in one place, the disputes that tested champerty doctrine, discovery and privilege, disclosure rules, usury characterization, and funder cost liability, scattered across dockets and law firm client alerts rather than organized anywhere as a field.
This is one of the first independent efforts to organize that institutional memory: 38 real disputes involving litigation funders, funded parties, courts, and regulators, drawn from public sources and organized by the legal issue each one actually turned on. Patterns matter as much as precedents, read individually, these are case notes; read together, they start to show where this field's real fault lines sit, and where they're still moving.
This is Phase 1 of an ongoing project, compiled from public sources, published opinions, court dockets, and secondary reporting, not from subscription legal databases. It is not exhaustive, and it is not a substitute for independent verification: citations should be Shepardized or KeyCited before being relied upon in any filing or decision. We will continue to expand and correct this library over time.
Every dispute below is tagged against this same set of categories, the taxonomy itself is a map of where this field's live legal questions sit.
| Settlement authority & consent | Who controls settlement decisions; funder vetoes and approval rights | 5 |
| Privilege & work product | Whether sharing case materials with funders waives protection | 6 |
| Disclosure obligations | Court/rule-mandated disclosure of funding arrangements | 9 |
| Champerty & maintenance | Common-law/statutory doctrines barring third-party investment in claims | 13 |
| Usury & unconscionability | Whether funding is a 'loan' subject to rate caps; fairness of terms | 8 |
| Funding agreement interpretation | Contract construction disputes between funder and funded party | 14 |
| Breach of funding agreement | Claims that a funder or funded party breached the agreement | 1 |
| Attorney-funder disputes | Fee-sharing, ethics, and law firm funding arrangements | 2 |
| Consumer litigation funding | Pre-settlement advances to individual plaintiffs | 10 |
| Commercial litigation funding | Funding of business-to-business claims | 21 |
| Arbitration funding | Funding issues arising in or about arbitration | 2 |
| Portfolio finance | Funding of a slate of cases or a law firm's book | 2 |
| Insolvency & bankruptcy | Funding disputes intersecting with insolvency | 1 |
| Damages & valuation | Disputes over funder returns, priority, and claim valuation | 6 |
| Regulatory enforcement | Government/regulator actions involving funders | 3 |
| Professional responsibility & ethics | Rule 5.4, independence, and conduct issues | 6 |
| Fraud or misrepresentation | Fraud claims involving funders or funded litigation | 4 |
| Cross-border enforcement | International enforcement and multi-jurisdiction issues | 4 |
| Funder cost liability | Funder exposure to adverse costs (e.g., Arkin cap) | 3 |
Many of these disputes turn on expert testimony, on valuation, industry custom and practice, legal ethics, or damages. The Institute partners with world-class expert witness referral companies for this purpose.
Resolved by settlement: Sysco assigned its antitrust claims to Burford SPV Carina Ventures LLC, and the arbitration was …
Settlement authority & consentSubstitution denied. The court held the assignment did violence to Rule 25(c)'s meaning of transferring an 'interest,' h…
Settlement authority & consentSeventh Circuit reversed on Illinois contract-formation grounds, material terms were not definite and drafts stated the…
Privilege & work productCourt rejected the champerty attack and held materials shared with funders under NDA retained work-product protection, t…
Privilege & work productWork-product protection held not waived by disclosure to funders; funding discovery largely denied.
Privilege & work productFunding discovery denied as irrelevant absent a particularized showing.
Privilege & work productCourt found funding discovery irrelevant and potentially harmful to plaintiff; denied.
Privilege & work productChancery held funding documents protected work product, prepared because of litigation.
Disclosure obligationsFirst major MDL-wide funding disclosure order; in camera model followed elsewhere.
Disclosure obligationsDisclosure of the funding agreement ordered, adequacy in class actions can trump confidentiality.
Disclosure obligationsFederal Circuit denied mandamus, leaving the disclosure inquiry intact; the episode exposed hidden funding structures be…
Disclosure obligationsDenied, funding was irrelevant absent specific showing; NJ later adopted L. Civ. R. 7.1.1 (2021) requiring baseline fun…
Disclosure obligationsFirst Department affirmed vacatur of note of issue and ordered funding discovery, fraud allegations opened the door.
Champerty & maintenanceMinnesota Supreme Court abolished common-law champerty prospectively, citing modern safeguards; on remand courts still s…
Champerty & maintenanceApplying Kentucky law, the court held the funding agreements champertous and void as against public policy.
Champerty & maintenanceHeld champertous under N.Y. Jud. Law § 489; sham purchase fell outside the statute's safe harbor.
Champerty & maintenanceHeld champertous under Justinian, assignments made for the purpose of litigation violated § 489.
Champerty & maintenanceSouth Carolina abolished champerty as a defense, holding other doctrines police litigation abuse.
Champerty & maintenanceSJC abandoned champerty in Massachusetts, reviewing such agreements instead for overall fairness.
Champerty & maintenanceCourt enforced the agreements, not loans (repayment contingent), not champertous, not against Texas public policy.
Champerty & maintenanceVoid, a 'gambling contract' akin to champerty.
Champerty & maintenanceChamperty 'remains a viable defense in Pennsylvania'; agreement invalidated.
Champerty & maintenanceRejected, funder had no control of the litigation and no assignment of the claim; agreement lawful in Delaware.
Consumer litigation fundingHeld: the transactions are loans subject to the UCCC, despite contingent repayment.
Consumer litigation fundingHeld: contingent, non-recourse funding agreements are not 'loans' under those statutes.
Consumer litigation fundingCourt treated the advance as a loan subject to usury limits because repayment risk was illusory.
Regulatory enforcementAdvances recharacterized as loans; claims largely sustained after years of appellate detours over CFPB structure.
Attorney-funder disputesEnforced, a loan secured by receivables is not fee-splitting; public policy supports law firm access to capital.
Fraud or misrepresentationJudgment held procured by fraud and unenforceable in the U.S.; the funding agreement's terms became public evidence.
Funder cost liabilityCreated the 'Arkin cap': a commercial funder's adverse-costs liability limited to the amount of its funding.
Funder cost liabilityFunders held jointly liable for indemnity-basis costs, they 'follow the fortunes' of the litigation they fund.
Funding agreement interpretationThrew hundreds of UK funding agreements into doubt overnight; funders rewrote LFAs around multiples of outlay.
Damages & valuationYes, the CAT may order funder/lawyer payment ahead of the class; Rodger v. Google added that paying the funder first ca…
Breach of funding agreementCourt granted Therium a proprietary injunction preserving proceeds, finding serious issues to be tried in the funder's f…
Arbitration fundingUpheld, arbitrators may award third-party funding costs under the Arbitration Act.
Cross-border enforcement$16.1B judgment for plaintiffs, the largest funder-driven outcome to date; Burford's share (a large majority of proceed…
Champerty & maintenanceLFAs in Ontario class actions require court approval; courts police funder returns, control, and privilege safeguards.
Champerty & maintenanceAction dismissed as champertous 'trafficking in litigation', despite a strong prima facie fraud case.
Disclosure obligationsThe Federal Circuit affirmed the contempt finding and the $200 per day sanction. Rule 45's 100-mile limit governs party-issued and attorn…
Privilege & work productThe Court ordered production of the complete, unredacted funding agreement and fee agreements. The class context creates real conflict an…
Disclosure obligationsThe court held the trustee exceeded his authority, lacked authority to borrow, and did not exercise reasonable business judgment given th…
Champerty & maintenanceThe High Court confirmed it has inherent jurisdiction to order disclosure of funding arrangements where there is a credible basis to beli…
Funder cost liabilityThe Court of Appeal upheld an uncapped indemnity-basis costs order against the funder. The Arkin cap is a guideline, not a binding rule…
Funder cost liabilityThe Court of Appeal confirmed security for costs can be ordered against a litigation funder even where no order could be made against the…
Arbitration fundingThe tribunal ordered security for costs, treating the admitted funding together with the claimant's payment history as exceptional circum…
Arbitration fundingThe tribunal ordered the claimants to confirm whether their claims were third-party funded and, if so, to name the funder and describe th…
Consumer litigation fundingThe Ohio Supreme Court skipped the usury question and voided the advances outright as champerty and maintenance, holding that a contract …
Consumer litigation fundingThe Court of Appeals rejected the champerty and gaming theories but allowed the usury, Consumer Finance Act, and unfair and deceptive pra…
Attorney-funder disputesThe Ninth Circuit found no controlling New York authority on whether a funding agreement is a loan, or a cover for usury, where repayment…
Funding agreement interpretationThe Federal Circuit affirmed, holding Uniloc collaterally estopped from re-litigating the existence of the Fortress license and its stand…