This week, the leading Dutch procedural law journal JBPr published a commentary on the ongoing greenwashing-related class action against Dutch flag-carrier KLM, written by two members of the Loyens & Loeff class actions team.
Marit Bosselaar and Peter Sprietsma from the class actions team wrote a commentary on the ongoing class action against KLM Royal Dutch Airlines (KLM), which was published this week by the leading Dutch civil procedural law journal Jurisprudentie Burgerlijk Procesrecht. The contribution focusses on the possibility of parties intervening in cases governed by the Dutch Collective Damages in Class Action Act (Dutch Acronym: WAMCA).
Our class actions team previously reported on the trend of the increasing amount and increasingly high profile of ESG litigation in the Netherlands, such as the Shell and Urgenda cases. Many of the ESG related cases are class actions. The Dutch class action against KLM fits this trend: claims organisation is stating that KLM is 'greenwashing' flying in airplanes by, inter alia, advertising carbon compensation schemes.
In their commentary, Marit and Peter discuss the trend of ESG
class actions as well as several relevant considerations in a
recent interim judgment in the KLM case. Particularly relevant,
from a procedural point of view, is whether a claims organisation
can intervene in a WAMCA-case, on the side of the claim
organisation that initiated the proceedings, after the dedicated
period for other claims organisations filing a writ of summons
regarding the same facts has lapsed. In short, the Amsterdam
District Court ruled in the KLM case that such an intervention
would, in principle, be contrary to the procedural system
introduced by the WAMCA: under the WAMCA, if multiple claims
organisations file a writ on the same events, the court will select
one 'exclusive representative' out of the claims
organisations that submitted an admissible claim (similar to the
'lead plaintiff' system in the US). An intervention by
other claims organisations at a later stage would indeed appear to
be incompatible with this WAMCA system.
Our class actions team always keeps abreast of ongoing developments
in ESG litigation and Dutch class actions (those governed by the
WAMCA and those litigated under the pre-WAMCA regime). Our class
actions team regularly publishes commentaries and articles on the
developments in Dutch class actions and ESG litigation. The
commentary on the KLM case as well as the class actions team's
other publications are available upon request.
The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.