Sarah Moore & Lily Parmar look at the impact of a recent Dutch ruling for product liability lawyers in the UK
- In February 2024, a court in Amsterdam certified the first ‘opt out’ product liability group action anywhere in Europe.
- This landmark ruling marks the Netherlands out as truly progressive in a legal context. Could the UK Law Commissions follow the Netherlands lead?
The Netherlands has long been seen as a bastion of progressivism, social tolerance and good old-fashioned common sense. The landmark decision of a court in the Hague, against oil giant Shell, in May 2021, requiring it to cut its carbon emissions by 45% is the most high-profile recent example of this. However, it is perhaps a lesser-known procedural innovation in the Netherlands, the Dutch Act on Collective Damages Claims (WAMCA), introduced in January 2020, that holds the truly revolutionary potential to deliver the kind of mass access to justice that claimant lawyers in other countries, including the UK, can currently only dream about.
Happily, for a group of women in the Netherlands,
