Many jurisdictions provide specific mechanisms for handling litigation involving a large number of parties. The need for such a mechanism most typically arises where a large number of persons have been adversely affected by another's conduct, but each individual s loss is insufficient to make undertaking individual litigation economically viable.
Some jurisdictions have adopted a procedure known as a "class action", which enables the claims of a number of persons against the same defendant to be determined in a single suit. In a class action, a representative plaintiff' sues on his own behalf and on behalf of the other persons ("the class") who have a claim to a remedy for the same or a similar alleged wrong to that alleged by the representative plaintiff, and who have claims that share questions of law or fact in common with those of the representative plaintiff.
Under the current law in Hong Kong, the sole machinery for dealing with multi-party proceedings in Hong Kong is a rule on representative proceedings under the Rules of the High Court which was criticised as restrictive and inadequate by the Chief Justice's Working Party on Civil Justice Reform in its Final Report in 2004.
In the light of this, a sub-committee was established in November 2006 to consider whether a scheme for multi-party litigation should be adopted in Hong Kong and, if so, to devise a suitable scheme.
The members of the sub-committee are:
| Mr Anthony Neoh, SC (Chairman) |
| Hon Mr Justice Barma, Judge of the Court of First Instance of the High Court |
| Ms Agnes Choi, General Manager & Head of Corporate Insurance, HSBC Insurance (Asia-Pacific) Holdings Limited |
| Hon Mr Justice Joseph Fok, Justice of Appeal of the Court of Appeal of the High Court |
| Mr Ambrose Ho, SC Consumer Council |
| Professor Elsa Kelly, Adjunct Associate Professor, Faculty of Law, Chinese University of Hong Kong |
| Mr Mickey Ko Man-kin, Managing Director, Integrated Corporation |
| Mr Thomas Edward Kwong, Deputy Director (Litigation) , Legal Aid Department |
| Mr Kenneth S Y Ng, Head of Legal and Compliance, Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Ltd |
| Mr Martin Rogers, Solicitor, Clifford Chance |
| Professor Tsang Shu-ki, Department of Economics, Hong Kong Baptist University |
| Mr Anthony Wood, Deputy Chief Counsel, Legal Services Division, Securities and Futures Commission |
The Sub-committee's secretary is Mr Byron Leung, Senior Government Counsel.