"Only To The Extent Permitted" - Having Your Cake And Eating It

Like most people, lawyers love the idea of having their cake and eating it. A good example is when they deploy the phrase "only to the extent permitted". But does it work as a drafting technique? A recent Court of Appeal case, looking at litigation funding agreements, suggests it does.

PACCAR – a recap

The 2023 UK Supreme Court decision in PACCAR established that litigation funding agreements of the type that were then widespread in collective proceedings in the Competition Appeal Tribunal — with a "funder's fee" calculated as a percentage of the damages awarded to the successful class representative — are damages-based agreements. As a result, they are only enforceable if compliant with the statutory regime for damages-based agreements.