Back a Lawsuit, Get a Return

The white-wigged sages of British jurisprudence outlawed investing in someone else’s lawsuit for fear that feudal lords would manipulate their subjects’ litigation for profit or mere sport. The 18th century British jurist William Blackstone condemned such investment, known as champerty, for “pervert[ing] the process of law into an engine of oppression.”

Restrictions on champerty faded as the law evolved. In the U.S., the Supreme Court held in the 1960s that civil rights organizations have a constitutional right to invest in other people’s lawsuits that further the advocacy groups’ aims. More recently, many states have loosened rules to allow consumer-finance firms to lend money for legal cases. The companies that have done litigation finance to date have mostly made loans to plaintiffs’ lawyers pursuing slip-and-fall and auto-accident suits, often charging interest rates of 20 percent or higher.