Korean Civil Procedure Law have provisions about co-litigation and appointed-party system. These systems, however, are insufficient to recover the rights of many victims collectively in the case of damages with similar cause. Consumer organization`s l...
Korean Civil Procedure Law have provisions about co-litigation and appointed-party system. These systems, however, are insufficient to recover the rights of many victims collectively in the case of damages with similar cause. Consumer organization`s litigation system in Consumer Basic Law become mere preventive protection of rights. It is not useful for posteriori remedy of consumer`s loss. Thus, there are not different views on the necessity of the system to recover the rights of many victims collectively. However, it is still hard to say that the most appropriate system is deducted. There is not a common consent on the actual effectiveness of American class action system in Korea. Recently, the two-step type system which separate the procedure of determining liability of perpetrator from that of determining scope of compensation has attracted attention of many countries. In Japan, the bill of two-step type consumer collective litigation was submitted to the National Assembly. This Article is to examine two-step type collective litigation system in Brasil, France, Italy and Japan. The two-step type system classifies objects of inquiry. It has different structure of inquiry in each steps. By constituting the first step with opt-out type, the advantages of class action or group litigation can be accepted, and by constituting the second step with opt-in type, problems of complexity and delay of determining individual victim`s scope of compensation, and problems of procedure and costs involved in distribution of compensation can be solved.