The former general counsel of General Electric on Tuesday re-upped a call for transparency in cases where third-party funders take positions in federal litigation.

Former GE GC Brackett Denniston III, now the chairman of the U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform, wrote a letter to the committee at the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, which is considering proposed changes to federal discovery rules that would require a more fulsome disclosure of when third-party funders are involved in federal court.

“The funding industry has long existed in darkness,” Denniston wrote. “It is time for it to emerge into the light.”

Denniston's letter continues a volley of letter-writing to the committee by responding to concerns raised in a letter from three officials at major litigation funders, who themselves were responding to a letter to the committee from 30 former and current in-house lawyers, including Denniston, who were calling for greater disclosure.

The funders, which included officials at Therium Capital Management Ltd., Bentham IMF and Burford Capital, wrote last month that the push from companies to amend the Federal Rules of Procedure to require third-party litigation funders to reveal their positions amounts to “a push for forced disclosure of irrelevant information that one party is simply curious to know.”

But in Tuesday's response from Denniston, the former GE GC wrote that parties and courts have a right to know, for example, whether a presiding judge or juror in a case might be invested in a funder that has an interest in a particular outcome. Denniston also wrote that in class actions disclosure could be “critical to the adequacy of representation” required under the Federal Rules.

Denniston also expressed doubt to the funders' claims that companies are frequent users of litigation funding. “It may be true in some cases, but as one who served for more than 20 years as the general counsel and head of litigation for a major U.S. company, consider me skeptical funding is as popular as some of its supporters maintain,” Denniston wrote. “Companies are skilled at identifying meritorious cases and funding them. But, whether companies use funding or not has no relevance to whether these arrangements should be as secret as a Grand Cayman bank account,” he wrote.

Read Denniston's full letter below:

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