Winston & Strawn Sponsors, Speaks at the IMN Litigation Finance Forum 2025

Winston & Strawn was proud to sponsor the IMN Litigation Finance Forum 2025 at the Union League Club in New York City. The IMN Litigation Finance Forum is the premier conference for relationship building, thought leadership, and business development in the litigation funding space. Now in its 7th year, the event’s program included multiple panel discussions, roundtables, and structured meet-ups to exchange insights and build valuable connections.

Chris Capitanelli, partner in Winston’s Structured Finance and Esoteric Finance practices, was a featured speaker on the “What Impacts Are Regulation, Disclosure, Ethics and Transparency Having on Dealmaking” panel.

Key takeaways

• EU and UK institutions have been reacting to the PACCAR ruling by the UK Supreme Court, which held that a Litigation Funding Agreement which entitles the funder to recover a percentage of any damages recovered is a Damages Based Agreement, rendering most such agreements unenforceable.
• Specifically, the European Law Institute (ELI) enacted principles by which member countries should govern Third Party Litigation Funding (TPLF) with a focus on using a light-touch regulatory approach as opposed to broad prohibitions or constraints and in the UK, the Civil Justice Counsel has recommended the government implement legislation to immediately reverse the PACCAR ruling, also arguing for light-touch regulations a la the ELI principles.
• Conversely, in the U.S., there has been a concerted effort to establish new regulatory constraints on TPLF, with support for these restrictions coming mostly from the insurance, trucking and tech industries, with their arguments focusing on supposed bad actors and national security risks.
• On the federal level, these efforts have consisted of proposed bills seeking enhanced oversight in TPLF agreements and new taxes on income received from third parties via TPLF, none of which have been enacted.
• On the state level, these efforts have been much more successful, with many states having bills introduced that seek to constrain TPLF, many written to include both commercial and consumer-focused TPLF, even when the publicly stated regulatory targets are only commercial actors.
• In reality, commercial TPLF is utilized by many US corporations to optimize their business, saving their capital to be spent on core business operations while still enabling them to engage in necessary litigation to recover wrongful losses.

Pete Morgan, partner and Co-Chair of Winston’s Structured Finance and Esoteric Finance practices, also attended the conference.