Collective Redress in Japan — Status quo and future prospects —

Japan introduced a special mechanism of collective redress to tackle with small-mass harm consumer disputes. The new mechanism is two fold: One is injunction and the other is claim for damages. Focusing on the claim for damages, it has following features: 1) only consumer organizations qualified by the government have standing; 2) it is a two stage structure, the first being a procedure to confirm the matters common to all damaged consumers, the second being a procedure to evaluate and determine the money due to each damaged consumer; 3) it is an ‘opt-in’ system and the consumers have to show explicitly their intention to opt in if they were to get compensated by this system; 4) the scope of the cases and damages covered by this system is limited. The new mechanism for consumer damages is quite restrictive and is not expected to function well. As for future prospect, we should consider introducing a system that is either ‘opt-out’ or ‘non-binding’, but even these schemes have their problems, which raises a doubt as to whether or not collective court-based remedy mechanism is adequate to tackle with small mass harm problems and whether or not we should turn to other mechanism such as administrative approach or ADR.