On 14 December 2020 Parliament passed the landmark Private Funding of Legal Services Act 2020. The act was published in the
Cayman Islands Gazette on 7 January 2021 but is subject to a commencement order and is therefore not yet in force.
Background
In the Cayman Islands, the doctrines of maintenance and champerty were both crimes and torts, which sometimes created obstacles for litigants seeking to enter into funding agreements with third parties to obtain financing for the litigation in return for a share of the proceeds.
Following the growing global prevalence of litigation funding (including in jurisdictions such as England and Wales and the British Virgin Islands, where maintenance and champerty have already been abolished), a flurry of applications seeking the approval of third-party funding agreements have come before the Grand Court in recent years. In recognising the growing limitations on the application of the maintenance and champerty doctrines, the Grand Court sough