Beyond Litigation: Mega-Clients, Mega-Law and Mini-Trials

Abstract

The extraordinary size of modern corporations literally means that big business takes place at virtually every level of commercial operations, whether in terms of contracts with other businesses, consumer disputes, health and safety concerns or dealings with public authorities and agencies. Add to this the modern tendency to diversify business operations and engage in highly competitive strategies involving frequent acquisitions, divestments, joint ventures and other complex arrangements, together with an inexorable internationalisation of business activity, and one is provided with a context where the potential for dispute is quite vast, and considerably complex. The inevitable corollary it seems is that dispute-resolution itself becomes a growth industry.¹ Companies are faced with situations where litigation reaches ‘mega-levels’, not only at one end a frequent activity in terms of repeated small-scale disputes (as with consumer claims), but also, at the other end of the dispute spectrum, the potential for individual disputes and litigation which are of mega- proportions in terms of their business or financial implications,² or in terms of their complexity (whether over a major product liability issue or a major business agreement or arrangement breaking down or a significant regulatory challenge).