{"id":203,"date":"2007-06-26T22:58:27","date_gmt":"2007-06-26T19:58:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.valimaki.com\/blog\/?p=203"},"modified":"2018-12-28T17:27:51","modified_gmt":"2018-12-29T00:27:51","slug":"two-reasons-why-finland-lacks-class-actions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.valimaki.com\/?p=203","title":{"rendered":"Two reasons why Finland lacks class actions"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m currently doing research on class actions.<\/a> My question is why the new Finnish law – although titled “law on class actions” – has little to do with the basic idea it is supposed to enable. Here’s my quick answer based on what I’ve learned so far:<\/p>\n

(1) Flawed legislative process. In Finland, laws are prepared in ministries where “working groups” discuss the political details before a formal law proposal is submitted to the parliament for “review”. The most important part of the process is the composition of the working group. In the case of class actions, the working group consisted of civil servants from the Ministry of Justice,industry lobbyists and representatives of state-run consumer and environmental agencies. Guess how you can reach the magic word – “consensus”? Compromise everything!<\/p>\n

(2) Erkki Aurej\u00e4rvi – though he never meant it. This guy is a retired professor of law who initiated the Finnish tobacco cases in the late 1980s. He is also a supporter of class actions. Unfortunately, he also invited tobacco companies to start intensive legislative lobbying in Finland, which an individual law professor could not match (Aurej\u00e4rvi tried to get elected to the parliament without success). In the mid 1990s, when class actions were proposed in Finland for the first time, Philip Morris et co managed to unite “the Finnish industry” and even legal professionals to object any kind of class action law. When the preparation of class action legislation started again ten years later, the opinions (and lobbyists) in the industry had not changed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m currently doing research on class actions. My question is why the new Finnish law – although titled “law on class actions” – has little to do with the basic idea it is supposed to enable. Here’s my quick answer based on what I’ve learned so far: (1) Flawed legislative process. In Finland, laws are … Continue reading “Two reasons why Finland lacks class actions”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-203","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-law","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.valimaki.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.valimaki.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.valimaki.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.valimaki.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.valimaki.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=203"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.valimaki.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1962,"href":"https:\/\/www.valimaki.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203\/revisions\/1962"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.valimaki.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.valimaki.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.valimaki.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}