Litigation crowdfunding in the news today. The ‘spin’ in this story is focused on the Good Law Project, but there are other cases which illustrate why some regulation could be in the public interest dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9…
The unsuccessful judicial review and appeal in the Backto60 women’s state pension age case crowdfunded on raising expectations that success would bring “full restitution”, when that was impossible link.medium.com/IP1JEL2zRgb
Reclaim These Streets (I wrote about their charity crowdfunding in March link.medium.com/lLgConqARgb) have now launched a litigation crowdfunder to continue their claim against the Metropolitan police and “secure protest rights for the future” crowdjustice.com/case/defending…
Their crowdfunding page doesn’t identify the individuals bringing the claim, doesn’t explain precisely what order they are asking the court to make in order to “secure protest for the future” and overstates the success of their urgent claim in March bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/…
Dr Christian Jessen libelled a woman in public life, laughed at the very idea that his tweet might have legal consequences, ignored the legal process, lied in court about why he had done so and was penalised with indemnity costs. Should his crowdfunding be regulated in some way?
Good Law Project has raised over £60,000 of a stretch target of £65,000 for its challenge on behalf of some other charities to the charitable status of @ALLIANCELGB crowdjustice.com/case/lgba-char…. Its page links to the grounds of appeal and the recent decision to award charitable status
The page text acknowledges that the case is not straightforward and that there is little law on who has “standing” to appeal a charity registration. But it doesn’t even explain that little law or point out how far the grounds of appeal repeat objections first made to registration
The GLP on Kate Bingham, omitting to mention that she was a venture capitalist with long experience in the life sciences industry, and that her role as leader of the Vaccine Taskforce did not require public health experience but was to lead early procurement of viable vaccines 
I would wait and see precisely what reform of litigation crowdfunding is proposed before either condemning or supporting it. Failed crowdfunded litigation- Marcus Ball’s attempted private prosecution of Boris Johnson is another example - doesn’t serve the public interest
Apart from the disappointment to individuals with over-inflated expectations of the outcome of litigation, failure tends to undermine people’s confidence in the competence and integrity of judges and judicial decision-making. Whose interest does that serve?
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