Mass litigation in times of corona
News
Jos Hoevenaars joins Vici ‘Affordable Justice’ team

On 1 November 2023, Jos Hoevenaars re-joined Erasmus School of Law after completing a one-year research project at the Dutch Council for the Judiciary which focused on questions of effectiveness of judgments in the Dutch legal system (report available early 2024). Previously, he was part of our ERC ‘Building EU civil justice’ team, where his research focused mainly on (self)representation in court and access to justice in a cross-border context. In 2022, he was the executive project manager for a study commissioned by the Dutch Ministry of Justice and Security and its Research and Documentation Centre (WODC) that looked into the usefulness and necessity of a litigation fund for collective actions in the Netherlands (Dutch report available here, English book forthcoming).
The coming years he will strengthen the Vici ‘Affordable Access to Justice’ team, focusing on costs and funding of collective actions, and he will develop a new line of research in the area of strategic litigation in which he will investigate the collective and representative action field from a legal mobilisation perspective. He will also play a role in the setting up of a European Civil Justice Centre.


Published: April 23, 2020

Jos Hoevenaars and Xandra Kramer published a blogpost on conflictoflaws.net on mass litigation in times of corona and developments in the Netherlands. It discusses the rise of litigation and in particular mass litigation following from the corona crisis. Around the world, cases are being filed relating to health and economic effects and labour conditions. The new Dutch act that became applicable on the 1st of January 2020, the Collective Redress of Mass Damages Act (WAMCA), may be a useful tool to address the litigation following the corona crisis.