증권관련 집단소송에서 디스커버리의 인적 적용 범위에 관한 연구

In 2022, the Supreme Court of Korea's Advisory Council on Judicial Administration recognized the need to introduce a version of the discovery in civil litigation. This recognition was based on a report submitted by the Supreme Court's Discovery Study Group, which proposed amending the Korean Civil Procedure Act. This proposal raises the issue of whether the amendment will adversely impact the Securities-related Class Action Act of Korea by imposing discovery duty to non-party class members. In the United States, federal courts generally recognize that the representative plaintiff in a class action is a party, and the plaintiff has certain obligations under the general discovery procedures. But the same discovery duty does not apply in full to class members who are not representatives, although U.S. courts have the power to allow discovery to class members on a limited basis. This rule allows the class action system, which is intended to be an efficient mechanism, to not lose its efficiency by being loaded with discovery duty of the class members. I argue that if Korean securities-related class action law requires non-represented members to have the same degree of discovery obligations as the representative plaintiff, it is likely that the Securities-related Class Action Act will lose whatever teeth it has. I argue that an explicit provision limiting its application to class members is needed when introducing the discovery system to the Korean Civil Procedure Act.