Class Actions in Nigeria

Book Review

Title: Author: Foreword: Book Reviewer: Pages:

MAn Important Book Chapters

Class Actions in Nigeria Uche Val Obi, SAN Professor Fidelis Oditah, QC, SAN Professor Gbolahan Elias, SAN 157 r. U V Obi, SAN has written an important book, and he has written it well. I commend him for writing it. The book is important, because it is the first book to be written on Nigerian law, on a subject that is topical and potentially of great social significance.

The subject is topical, as we have begun to see in recent times, attempts to introduce class actions into Nigerian courts. Rules of court, have begun to allow them explicitly in limited contexts, chiefly to do with intellectual property. Litigants have begun to try them, even in contexts where it is far from obvious that the law so provides. The author acknowledges that, there is no definitive appellate case on the subject yet.

The subject is significant, because allowing class actions can make it possible to litigate either at all or more efficiently than otherwise, disputes which ordinarily would be too complicated and burdensome to litigate. For example, impecunious Plaintiffs in large numbers who come together as a class, may become able to afford legal representation which any of them working alone may be unable to afford.

The book is well-organised. It has 7 chapters: an introduction; and discrete chapters on jurisdiction, certification, notices, settlement and trial, damages and other relief, and class arbitration. The author rightly makes important distinctions. For example, he rightly separates class actions (which can be filed and prosecuted for a mass of people, many of whose members are unknown and have not explicitly consented to the filing and prosecution of the action), from representative and other multiparty actions (where the Plaintiff needs to be known and/or have consented).

He also emphasises the four standard points which modern USA law tells us must be established, for class actions to proceed: (a) numerousity (a class of Plaintiffs large enough for traditional multiparty litigation rules to be inadequate); (b) commonality (there must be questions of law and fact that are common to the class); (c) typicality (the claims and defences in issue should be typical for the class); and (d) that the parties will be adequately represented.

The author has read widely. I was enlightened and surprised to learn from him (at page 7), for example, that class actions actually started in England (not in the USA), and then as long ago as the year 1676, a full century before the USA became an independent nation. I was also enlightened and surprised, to find that there is much fairly well-developed law on class actions in arbitration contexts.

Criticism

If I have a criticism, it is that book does not end emphatically with a proposal for a draft model order and rules of civil procedure, that the various courts in the country can adopt for class action purposes. Perhaps the author is so comfortable with the American Federal Civil Procedure Rule 23 on class actions, that he sees the way forward for Nigeria, to be to adopt that rule as it currently stands.

But, this is a relatively small point. Please, buy the book and read it. I look forward to reading the second edition, which will undoubtedly be called for when we get appellate cases and more expansive rules of court on the subject, to chew on.