Product Liability 2009 - Arnold & Porter LLP

Tonucci & Partners Albania
6.6 Do special rules apply to the settlement of
claims/proceedings e.g. is court approval required for the
settlement of group/class actions, or claims by infants, or
otherwise?
There are no special rules with regard to group/class actions or
otherwise. The general principles for the settlement of claims
proceedings apply.
6.7 Can Government authorities concerned with health and
social security matters claim from any damages awarded
or settlements paid to the Claimant without admission of
liability reimbursement of treatment costs, unemployment
benefits or other costs paid by the authorities to the
Claimant in respect of the injury allegedly caused by the
product. If so, who has responsibility for the repayment of
such sums?
There are no specific provisions under the Albanian legislation
regulating the above situation.
7 Costs / Funding
7.1 Can the successful party recover: (a) court fees or other
incidental expenses; (b) their own legal costs of bringing
the proceedings, from the losing party?
Under the Albanian legislation, the successful party is entitled to
recover court fees and attorney’s fees afforded by the claimant, to
the measure the claim is accepted by the court (Article 106 of
Albanian Procedure Code).
7.2 Is public funding e.g. legal aid, available?
There are a series of non profit organisations providing legal
assistance to parties in economic difficulties, but there is no state
budget funding for the provision of legal assistance in product
liability related cases. However, under the Law no. 9902 it is
provided that the Ministry in charge of the trade affairs supports the
consumer associations with funds deriving from the approved state
budget, but no specification as to the destination of use of such
funds is provided under the law.
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7.3 If so, are there any restrictions on the availability of public
funding?
Please refer to question 7.2 above.
7.4 Is funding allowed through conditional or contingency fees
and, if so, on what conditions?
There are no specific provisions regulating the above proposed
situation.
7.5 Is third party funding of claims permitted and, if so, on
what basis may funding be provided?
There are no provisions under the Albanian legislation prohibiting
the third party funding of a product liability related claim.
8 Updates
8.1 Please provide, in no more than 300 words, a summary of
any new cases, trends and developments in Product
Liability Law in Albania.
As to the recent developments with regard to product liability law
in Albania, we can report that recently, Law no. 9779, dated 16 July
2007 “For the general security, main requirements and evaluation of
conformity of non nutritive products” and Law no. 9902, dated 17
April 2008 “On the consumer’s protection”, have demonstrated a
increased interest of the legislator to provide more attention to this
issue. However, there are difficulties related especially with the
implementation of the relevant statutory acts. In our judgment, the
above objective difficulties are related to the necessity of buildingup
an informed consumer via a series of social, cultural and political
instruments and the improvement of the quality of the work of
Albanian courts which have been improving very positively in
recent years.
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Albania