<\/p>\n
In recent years, companies, especially in the banking, insurance, retail and services sectors, have had to deal with an increasingly complex phenomenon: the growth of repetitive lawsuits filed on a large scale.<\/p>\n
Access to Justice is a fundamental guarantee, and the right to bring legal action cannot be restricted simply because a given company is a party to a large number of lawsuits. On the contrary, repeated claims may reveal an equally repeated failure in the provision of services or a legitimate dispute affecting a large number of consumers.<\/p>\n
A different situation, however, arises when there are signs of a distorted use of the judicial process, through the artificial multiplication of claims, standardized allegations that do not reflect the particulars of each case, the fragmentation of claims or other practices indicating a deviation from the purpose of the right of action.<\/p>\n
Against this backdrop, the issue has gained institutional relevance. In 2024, Brazil\u2019s National Council of Justice (CNJ) issued Recommendation No. 159\/2024, aimed at identifying, addressing and, above all, preventing abusive litigation. At the same time, the National Inspectorate of Justice set up an information network enabling courts to exchange decisions, data and best practices related to the phenomenon.<\/p>\n
What is abusive litigation?<\/strong><\/p>\n CNJ Recommendation No. 159\/2024 itself provides a starting point. It defines abusive litigation as the deviation from, or manifest excess of, the limits imposed by the social, legal, political or economic purpose of the right of access to the Judiciary, and lists among its possible forms claims that are groundless, reckless, artificial, dilatory, fraudulent or unnecessarily split, among others.<\/p>\n The scale of the phenomenon is striking. In a national assessment released in December 2025, the National Council of Justice identified more than 129,000 lawsuits mentioning abusive litigation<\/strong>, 34,700 of them in the first half of that year alone. The study itself, however, found that judges have difficulty moving from suspicion to an actual finding of abuse and establishing objective criteria that can be applied consistently.<\/p>\n This caveat is essential: evidence of abuse is not proof of abuse, just as repeated claims do not, in themselves, amount to abusive litigation.<\/strong><\/p>\n The mistake of treating each lawsuit as an isolated case<\/strong><\/p>\n When a company is sued repeatedly, the natural reaction is to organize the defense of each case: receive the summons, review the documents, file the answer, produce evidence and follow the ruling.<\/p>\n Individually, this strategy makes sense. In mass litigation, however, it may fall short.<\/strong> If hundreds of lawsuits share similar features, there may be relevant information that only emerges when these cases are analyzed together.<\/p>\n This is precisely the direction indicated by the National Council of Justice. Among the possible signs listed in Recommendation No. 159\/2024 are the fragmented filing of several lawsuits on the same subject; similar initial complaints with generic information and identical causes of action; claims filed without essential documents; repeated lawsuits with no reference to previous ones; and a large volume of claims concentrated in the hands of a few attorneys.<\/p>\n None of these circumstances, taken in isolation, allows the automatic conclusion that a given claim is abusive. What matters is the combination and recurrence of these signs<\/strong>. The Recommendation itself instructs judges to consider conduct that may appear lawful when examined in isolation but may indicate a deviation of purpose when observed as a whole or over time.<\/p>\n From procedural defense to litigation intelligence<\/strong><\/p>\n An organization that manages hundreds or thousands of lawsuits holds a potentially valuable database.<\/p>\n Who are the plaintiffs? Which claims keep recurring? Which documents appear again and again? Are there substantially identical complaints? Is there an unusual geographic concentration? Do certain attorneys appear with disproportionate frequency? Are claims related to the same legal relationship being split up?<\/p>\n Seen individually, each lawsuit tells a story. Seen collectively, the case portfolio may reveal a pattern.<\/strong><\/p>\n The Judiciary\u2019s own institutional movement points in this direction. The Abusive Litigation Information Network maintained by the CNJ brings together the bodies responsible for monitoring these claims across the different courts and seeks to facilitate the exchange of information and best practices among them.<\/p>\n If the Judiciary is beginning to examine the phenomenon by cross-referencing information and identifying patterns, companies facing mass litigation need to be prepared to do the same.<\/strong><\/p>\n And what happens when abuse is proven?<\/strong><\/p>\n Identifying signs of abuse does not mean the plaintiff is automatically penalized. Due process and the preservation of access to Justice remain essential. The CNJ\u2019s national assessment itself highlights the complexity of the phenomenon and the need to balance the protection of rights with the prevention of abusive practices.<\/p>\n Once abuse is effectively demonstrated in a specific case, however, the remedies provided for in procedural law may apply, including those related to bad-faith litigation, as well as other measures appropriate to the circumstances.<\/p>\n The most significant change, therefore, may lie less in harsher consequences than in the growing ability to identify patterns that previously remained scattered across hundreds or thousands of lawsuits.<\/strong><\/p>\n What should legal departments be doing?<\/strong><\/p>\n For companies facing mass litigation, the challenge becomes turning case information into legal intelligence. This involves using the company\u2019s own litigation database to map potential patterns, identify atypical concentrations of claims, monitor court decisions and guidance on abusive litigation, and distinguish legitimate claims from situations that may present objective signs of abuse.<\/p>\n An efficient litigation intelligence system does more than identify possible abusive litigation. It also makes it possible to recognize when recurring claims reveal a problem within the company itself that needs to be fixed.<\/strong><\/p>\n This distinction strengthens litigation strategy and can also provide relevant input for business decisions, the review of internal procedures and the prevention of new disputes.<\/p>\n Conclusion<\/strong><\/p>\n The debate on abusive litigation should not be turned into a tool for hindering access to Justice. The issue lies elsewhere: preserving the legitimate exercise of the right of action while preventing the judicial process from being diverted from its purpose.<\/p>\n For companies facing mass litigation, this has an important strategic consequence. It is no longer enough to ask how to win each case. The question to ask is: does the organization know its own litigation portfolio well enough to tell hundreds of legitimate claims apart from hundreds of manifestations of the same potentially abusive pattern?<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In recent years, companies, especially in the banking, insurance, retail and services sectors, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-artigos"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n