US Class actions en Europese modellen in zake collectief herstel. Twee verschillende benaderingen om om te gaan met massaschade.

Redress for mass harm is a popular topic in modern legal scholarship. In the US, redress for mass harm is provided by way of class action litigation. In Europe, on the contrary, US style class actions are still avoided, and a mixture of various public mechanisms and collective lawsuits is preferred. In the EU the aim of collective redress it to provides efficient access to justice, for example in cases of small but widespread harm (so-called 'negative value claims'). However, US experiences show a sobering picture of a litigation landscape where lawyers get the larger chunk of the cake and the harmed persons quite often do not get much redress from class actions. On the other hand, solely a threat of class action litigation makes US undertakings shiver and require compliance scanning of their activity. As the EU is slowly going the US way in collective redress, US experiences with class actions is assessed in order to avoid pitfalls that will also surge in European collective redress.