Various Claimants v Mercedes-Benz & Ors

Large-scale group litigation requires active and coordinated case management where common legal, factual and technical issues overlap. Directions should obtain sufficient information and granularity to permit proportionate decisions about the scope and sequencing of future hearings. A listed case-management hearing may properly be preserved for determining those issues rather than being prematurely repurposed. Group litigation orders should nevertheless be considered separately, although similar orders may be appropriate in principle across related litigation.

The judgment concerned the management of the NOx Emissions Group Litigation, anticipated to involve more than one million claimants and over 1,500 defendants. The parties disputed whether a two-day case-management conference listed for March 2024 in the Mercedes litigation should be repurposed as a pan-litigation hearing to determine common legal and statutory-construction issues.

The claimants sought to preserve the Mercedes litigation as the lead litigation, including early factual and technical investigation of alleged prohibited defeat devices. The defendants sought earlier determination of common issues and deferred investigation of individual devices. The court also considered the coordination of existing and prospective group litigation order applications.

1. Active and proportionate management. The scale of the litigation, the substantial potential costs, the overlap between claims and the burden on court resources made active case management essential. The court had to avoid procedures becoming disproportionate to sums potentially recoverable and had to protect access to the civil justice system for other litigants.
2. March hearing. The two-day hearing listed for March 2024 remained the appropriate occasion to determine finally the scope and content of the hearings timetabled under the July 2023 order. The court was not then in a position to make firm decisions about the content of existing trial periods. The directions made did not prejudge the March hearing, and all options remained open.
3. Information and granularity. The immediate purpose of the order was to provide the court with the information and level of detail required to make appropriate case-management decisions in March. The future shape of the Mercedes and wider NOx litigation need not be determined solely by reference to the hearing periods already fixed.
4. Group litigation orders. Each anticipated group litigation order application required separate consideration. Nevertheless, such orders were likely to be appropriate in this litigation as a matter of principle. The court approved the group litigation order in the Ford litigation and directed that existing and prospective applications involving issued claim forms be heard together before Senior Master Cook on 17–19 January 2024, with 14–15 February held in reserve if required.