Scotland does not have class actions

“Class action” is an American term. England and Wales borrowed the idea and produced two things that resemble it without being it: the group litigation order, made under Section III of Part 19 of the Civil Procedure Rules, and the collective proceedings regime of the Competition Appeal Tribunal. Scotland did neither. It legislated separately, and later, and gave the procedure its own name.

The Scottish procedure is called group procedure, and cases brought under it are group proceedings. It exists because of Part 4 of the Civil Litigation (Expenses and Group Proceedings) (Scotland) Act 2018. Section 20(1) creates it in a single sentence: there is to be a form of procedure in the Court of Session known as group procedure. That is the whole of the jurisdiction. No sheriff court in Scotland can hear a group proceeding, whatever the value of the claims and wherever the people bringing them live. Parliament anticipated the obvious objection, that most individual claims in a group are far too small for the Court of Session: section 21(2)(g) allows the rules to disapply section 39 of the Courts Reform (Scotland) Act 2014, the provision that would otherwise reserve claims under £100,000 to the sheriff court.

Somebody brings it for everybody: the representative party

A group proceeding is not a case in which several hundred people are all pursuers. One person, called the representative party, brings the proceedings on behalf of a group of two or more people, each of whom has a separate claim that could have been litigated on its own. That is section 20(2) of the 2018 Act.

Three features of the representative party matter to anyone thinking of joining. There may be only one of them in any group proceeding, under section 20(4). The person does not have to be a member of the group at all, under section 20(3)(a), which is why senior counsel has been authorised to act as representative party in some of the cases now running. And nobody becomes the representative party by announcing it: the court must authorise the person, under section 20(3)(b), on an application made by motion under rule 26A.5.

One consequence is easy to miss. Because the representative party conducts the litigation, the individual members of the group do not run their own cases, do not appear, and do not make their own tactical decisions. Section 20(9) allows the representative party to make the claims and, subject to the rules, to do anything else in relation to them that the members could have done themselves. What you gain in cost and in weight of numbers, you give up in control.

There is also no jury. Section 20(10) disapplies section 11 of the Court of Session Act 1988, so a group proceeding is heard by a judge, even where an equivalent single claim for personal injury would have gone to a civil jury.

Nothing starts without permission

A group proceeding may be brought only with the permission of the Court of Session. That is section 20(5), and it is the single biggest practical difference between the Scottish procedure and the impression given by advertising. A firm may gather a thousand people together and still fail at the permission stage, in which case nothing is raised and nobody recovers anything.

Section 20(6) sets two tests, and both must be met. The court may give permission only if it considers that all of the claims raise issues, whether of fact or of law, which are the same as, or similar or related to, each other. And it may give permission only if it is satisfied that the representative party has made all reasonable efforts to identify and notify all potential members of the group about the proceedings. The second test is the reason that group actions are advertised so heavily: the advertising is not merely marketing, it is part of what the representative party must show the court.

The mechanics are in Chapter 26A. The application for permission is made by motion, with the summons and a group register lodged and served on the defender, under rule 26A.9. A Lord Ordinary considers it once the period for answers has expired and may grant permission without a hearing, order further information, or fix a hearing, under rule 26A.11. Where permission is granted, the order itself specifies the period during which claims may be brought into the proceedings, under rule 26A.12. That period is a deadline created by the court order, and it is separate from, and usually much shorter than, the legal time limit on your own claim.

Opt-in, not opt-out, and why that is the whole point

This is where nearly everything written about Scottish group actions goes wrong, and it goes wrong in an understandable way, because the Act does mention opt-out.

Section 20(7) of the 2018 Act says that an act of sederunt may provide for group proceedings to be brought as opt-in proceedings, opt-out proceedings, or either. Section 20(8) defines both. Opt-in proceedings are brought with the express consent of each member of the group. Opt-out proceedings sweep in everyone in Scotland with a qualifying claim unless they give notice that they do not consent, while people outside Scotland must consent expressly.

Change is being considered rather than imagined. The Scottish Civil Justice Council opened a call for evidence on group procedure on 24th October 2025, which closed on 23rd January 2026, and it asked expressly about introducing an opt-out procedure. No further Act of the Scottish Parliament would be needed to make that happen, because section 20(7) already authorises it. A change to the rules of court would be enough. Until such a change is made, the position stated on this page holds.

For a reader, the practical effect of opt-in is blunt and worth stating plainly. Nobody is claiming anything for you. If a group proceeding concerns a product you bought, a breach that exposed your data, or a workplace that injured you, you are outside it until you give notice in the prescribed form and your name is entered on the group register. If the period fixed by the court order passes and you have not joined, the group proceeding will not help you, whatever it eventually achieves.

How joining actually happens

Under rule 26A.14, a person gives consent for a claim to be brought in group proceedings by sending a notice in the prescribed form to the representative party. The representative party maintains a group register in the form set out in rule 26A.15, which is lodged in process and served on the defender and must be revised when the membership changes. Withdrawal works the same way in reverse: under rule 26A.26, consent is withdrawn at the point the revised register is lodged with the court.

In practice, joining means instructing a solicitor who is acting for members of that group, giving them the evidence that you fall within the group as the court has defined it, and entering into a funding agreement. The court’s definition of the group matters more than the name of the case. A group proceeding about diesel vehicles, for example, is limited to particular manufacturers, particular emissions standards and particular periods of ownership, and owning a similar car is not enough.

What is actually running in Scotland

The Court of Session publishes a register of group proceedings that have been given permission. It is the only reliable list, it names the representative party and the solicitors acting, and it is worth checking before believing any advertisement.

The first was the James Finlay (Kenya) group proceedings, in which permission was granted on 16th February 2022, brought on behalf of workers on Kenyan tea estates over working practices and conditions. Since then the register has grown in two directions. A large block concerns nitrogen oxide emissions from diesel vehicles, with separate proceedings for the Mercedes-Benz, Vauxhall and Opel, BMW, Peugeot, Citroën and DS, Jaguar Land Rover, Fiat and Chrysler, Volkswagen, Ford, and Nissan and Renault vehicle groups. The rest are miscellaneous: proceedings concerning historic abuse of patients by a former general practitioner, in which permission was granted on 29th May 2025, and proceedings arising out of the cyber-attack on EasyJet, in which permission was granted on 2nd April 2026.

Every one of those is live litigation. This page does not comment on the merits of any of them, and no page should tell you what any of them is going to be worth.

Group procedure does not extend your own time limit

Joining a group does not rescue a claim that is already too late, and the group proceeding does not carry its own clock. Each member has a separate claim, and each separate claim is governed by the ordinary Scots law of prescription and limitation.

For most claims for damages the rule is five-year negative prescription. Under section 6 of the Prescription and Limitation (Scotland) Act 1973 an obligation is extinguished if it subsists for a continuous period of five years without a relevant claim being made. Section 11(1) of the same Act fixes the starting point as the date the loss, injury or damage occurred, and section 11(3) postpones that start where the creditor was not aware, and could not with reasonable diligence have been aware, of the relevant facts. The word extinguished is not decoration. Prescription does not merely bar the remedy, it destroys the obligation, and no court has a discretion to revive it.

For personal injury the rule is different in kind as well as in length. Section 17(2) of the 1973 Act gives three years from the date of the injury or, if later, the date on which the pursuer became aware of the relevant facts. That is limitation rather than prescription, and section 19A allows the court, if it seems equitable, to permit an action to be brought even though the three years have passed. That discretion is real but it is not a safety net anyone should plan around.

What it costs, and who pays if the group loses

Group proceedings are ordinary Court of Session litigation for funding purposes, which means they are usually funded by a success fee agreement under Part 1 of the 2018 Act, sometimes with third party funding behind it. The statutory caps are set by the Success Fee Agreements Regulations 2020, in force since 27th April 2020, and they differ sharply by subject matter. For a claim for personal injury the cap is tiered: twenty per cent of the first £100,000, ten per cent of the next £400,000, and two and a half per cent above £500,000. For proceedings before an employment tribunal it is thirty five per cent. For every other kind of civil claim the cap is fifty per cent. Many group proceedings, including the diesel emissions cases, are claims for financial loss rather than for personal injury, and so fall in that last band. A cap is a ceiling and not a rate, and what you pay is whatever your own agreement says, but it is worth knowing what the ceiling is before signing.

The protection against paying the other side is narrower than people expect. Section 8 of the 2018 Act, in force since 30th June 2021, is qualified one-way costs shifting, and by its own terms it applies where the person bringing the proceedings makes a claim for damages for personal injuries or for a death from personal injuries, and conducts the proceedings in an appropriate manner as section 8(4) defines it. A group proceeding whose claims are for financial loss rather than personal injury falls outside that protection, so anyone joining a consumer or data group action should ask specifically what happens to expenses if the action fails, and get the answer in writing. Our page on what no win no fee actually means in Scotland sets out the funding rules in full.

If the case settles

Under rule 26A.30 the representative party must consult the group members on the terms of any proposed settlement before any damages may be distributed. Settlement in a group proceeding is therefore not a private matter between the representative party and the defender, and a member who has been kept in the dark has something to complain about. What a member cannot do is negotiate separately: the whole structure of the procedure is that the claims are advanced together.

Why the English pages you have read do not apply

England and Wales have two mechanisms, and neither is the Scottish one.

The first is the group litigation order, governed by Section III of Part 19 of the Civil Procedure Rules, rules 19.21 to 19.26. A group litigation order provides for the case management of claims that give rise to common or related issues, and it works through a group register of individual claims that have each been issued. It is not a representative action, there is no single representative party in the Scottish sense, and the permission test in section 20(6) of the 2018 Act has no equivalent.

The second is collective proceedings before the Competition Appeal Tribunal, under section 47B of the Competition Act 1998. That regime genuinely does allow opt-out claims, and this is the source of most of the confusion. It is also the one route by which a person in Scotland can find themselves in an opt-out class without doing anything, because the Tribunal is a United Kingdom body and its opt-out classes are defined by domicile in the United Kingdom rather than in England. But it is confined to claims arising from infringements of competition law. It does not reach a defective vehicle, a data breach or an injury at work.

A group action is not always the better route

Group proceedings suit claims that are individually small and collectively large, where the same question of fact or law decides everybody’s case. They suit them because no single group member could justify the cost of the fight alone. Where a claim is substantial in its own right, the calculation changes: an individual action gives control of the evidence, control of the settlement, and a remedy shaped to the particular loss, and in a personal injury claim it also brings the protection of qualified one-way costs shifting that a financial loss group claim does not have.

There are also claims that look collective and are not. A debt owed to several people by the same company is usually a set of separate claims that can be pursued individually, and our page on recovering money you are owed deals with those. An injury suffered alongside others at the same workplace or in the same incident is usually an ordinary reparation action, dealt with on our page on claiming for an injury. Where a professional adviser has caused loss to many clients in the same way, the route may be a professional negligence claim rather than a group proceeding.

Who does this work

Group proceedings in Scotland are run by a small number of firms. That is a function of the procedure rather than of prestige: a representative party must satisfy the court that all reasonable efforts have been made to identify and notify potential group members, and must then carry the litigation for everybody, which takes scale and takes funding. The court’s register names the solicitors acting in each set of proceedings, and it is a public document.

If you think a group proceeding may cover you, tell us what has happened and we will pass your details to one of our member firms, who will be in touch. If a group action is the wrong route for your claim, we will say that instead. You can check any Scottish solicitor on the Law Society of Scotland’s public roll yourself.

Sources

• Civil Litigation (Expenses and Group Proceedings) (Scotland) Act 2018, Part 4, and in particular section 20 and section 21, legislation.gov.uk
• Civil Litigation (Expenses and Group Proceedings) (Scotland) Act 2018, section 8 on qualified one-way costs shifting, legislation.gov.uk
• Act of Sederunt (Rules of the Court of Session 1994 Amendment) (Group Proceedings) 2020, SSI 2020/208, legislation.gov.uk
• Rules of the Court of Session, Chapter 26A: group procedure, Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service
• Register of group proceedings in the Court of Session, Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service
• Group procedure call for evidence, 24th October 2025, Scottish Civil Justice Council
• Prescription and Limitation (Scotland) Act 1973, section 6, section 17 and section 19A, legislation.gov.uk
• Civil Litigation (Expenses and Group Proceedings) (Scotland) Act 2018 (Success Fee Agreements) Regulations 2020, SSI 2020/110, legislation.gov.uk
• Competition Act 1998, section 47B, legislation.gov.uk

This page explains the law in general terms and is not advice on your own situation. It states the position as at 14th August 2026. Whether group proceedings may be brought on an opt-out basis depends on the rules of court, which are under review, and the register of live group proceedings changes. Check the current position before relying on anything here, and take advice from a solicitor about your own claim.