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The standard European consumer representative injunction actions have been extended from 2008 by a general class action procedure. This is normally an opt-in mechanism, but under certain conditions, and only for actions brought by a designated public authority such as the consumer ombudsman, it can be brought on an opt-out basis.

The only form of group litigation recognized by the Singapore Rules of Court at present is the representative action. The adequacy of the procedure, and the possible introduction of a wider group/class action mechanism, is being considered. The litigation in Tan Chin Seng & Others v. Raffles Town Club Pte Ltd [2002] SGHC 278 (High Court) and Tan Chin Seng and Others v. Raffles Town Club Pte Ltd (No 2) [2003] 3 SLR 307 (Court of Appeal) provides a useful example of representative proceedings and will be considered.

In less than a decade, the number of countries that permit representative litigation by private actors has multiplied dramatically. A minority of these procedures share all the features of the American class action for money damages. But there is a trend toward permitting private individuals and organizations to come forward on behalf of absent parties to obtain injunctive or declaratory relief or monetary compensation in some or all circumstances. Whether these procedures will spread to other countries or within countries to a wide variety of substantive legal matters and whether in particular private actors will be allowed to claim money damages in many or all instances is uncertain. Currently, the key obstacles to effective implementation of class action procedures are traditional legal funding rules that do not easily accommodate the realities of representative litigation.

While a class action such as one brought under Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 23 is certainly the most well-known mechanism for aggregating large numbers of similar claims, other approaches include mass joinder of parties, mass consolidation of separate cases, or “multidistrict litigation” transfer of federal cases from across the country into a single action for pretrial processing; corporate reorganizations under the U.S. Bankruptcy Code; large-scale inventories of clients controlled by a single attorney; government-initiated enforcement actions; and “private attorneys general” litigation brought on behalf of the general public.