About our Speakers

We are delighted to present to you the following line-up of speakers.

Our Chair woman: professor Ianika Tzankova

professor at the faculty of Law, Tilburg University

Ianika is a founding partner of Birkway and a full professor of Global Dispute Resolution and Mass Disputes at Tilburg University, an academic director of the honours program and academic directeur of the Global Law Program. She combines her academic activities with litigation project management and strategic and legal advisory work for internationally operating law firms and clients dealing with complex and multi party disputes and transnational litigation related to financial services, torts and competition law violations. In addition, she acts as an independant consultant for legal finance providers and companies making use of those. Prior to starting her independent consultancy practice Ianika was a litigation partner with a Dutch litigation boutique firm and a senior advisor to two publicly listed litigation finance companies.

Ianika is regularly consulted by lawyers in connection with arbitrations and court proceedings, including Supreme Court or Court of Appeal proceedings, in which issues in this field arise, by multinationals, industry organizations, (legal expense) insurers and by numerous national and European advisory bodies, governmental and otherwise, including the Civil Justice Council (UK), the Australian Law Reform Commission, BEUC, the ECOSOC (EU), National European Consumer Associations, the European Law Institute, the British Institute of International and Comparative Law, BusinessEurope (EU), the European Commission and various Dutch ministries. Ianika was a Fulbright Visiting Professor at Stanford Law School and is a Visiting Professor at Paris Dauphine. Ianika teaches the course on Civil Procedure and Global Dispute Resolution in the Global Law Program of Tilburg University.

The Honorable Charles R. Breyer  

Judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California

Judge Breyer received his AB in 1963 from Harvard College and his JD in 1966 from UC Berkeley School of Law. Upon graduation from law school, he clerked for Oliver J. Carter, chief judge, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. He then served as an assistant district attorney in San Francisco until 1973, when he was appointed assistant special prosecutor, Watergate Special Prosecution Force. He entered private practice in 1974, specializing in the defense of white-collar criminal cases. He was appointed to the U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, in 1997 by President Clinton. In 2011, he was appointed by the Chief Justice of the United States to serve on the Judicial Panel on Multi-District Litigation. He was appointed by President Obama (with the consent of the Senate) in 2012 to serve as Vice Chairman of the United States Sentencing Commission, and re-appointed in 2017 by President Trump. Since 1997, Judge Breyer has advised the governments of Egypt, India, Malaysia, Thailand, Turkey, and Ukraine on criminal justice and civil case management issues. In October 2018 he received the prestigious Devitt Award, the highest honor bestowed upon a United States Article III federal judge.

Antoinette Collignon- Smit Sibinga , LLM

Lawyer at LegalTree and chairwoman of Essure claims

Antoinette Collignon is a specialist in cross-border liability and personal injury cases, product liability, employers’ liability and private international law. She advises insurers, international claims agencies, companies, but also victims. In international cases, she works closely with reputable law firms in Europe and the United States. She is chairwoman of the Essure Claims Foundation. The Essure Claims Foundation is an independent Dutch foundation which stands up for the interests of injured women who have suffered damage from implantation of the Essure device. She is also member of the Dutch Legal Aid Team for the MH-17 and lead counsel at the ECHR in the case of the relatives against Russia. Antoinette regularly lectures at conferences and seminars. She was a part-time lecturer at the University of Leiden from 2014 – 2017. She also lectures at SDU and Kerckebosch and regularly writes articles about her field of expertise.

Kenneth R. Feinberg

The Law Offices of Kenneth R. Feinberg, PC

Kenneth R. Feinberg is one of the Nation’s leading experts in alternative dispute resolution, having served as Special Master of the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund, the Department of Justice Victims of State-Sponsored Terrorism Fund, the Department of the Treasury’s TARP Executive Compensation Program and the Treasury’s Private Multiemployer Pension Reform program. He was also Special Settlement Master of the Agent Orange Victim Compensation Program. In 2010, Mr. Feinberg was appointed by the Obama Administration to oversee compensation of victims of the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Most recently, he has served as Administrator of the New York State Dioceses’ Independent Reconciliation and Compensation Funds, the One Orlando Fund, the GM Ignition Switch Compensation Program, and One Fund Boston Compensation Program arising out of the Boston Marathon bombings. He is currently the Court-appointed Settlement Master in the Fiat/Chrysler Diesel Emissions class action litigation in San Francisco. He has been appointed mediator and arbitrator in thousands of complex disputes over the past 35 years.

Professor Antonio Gidi

Teaching Professor, Syracuse University College of Law (United States)
Visiting Professor, Federal University of ITAM (Mexico)
Visiting Professor, Federal University of Bahia (Brazil)

Gidi teaches Civil Procedure, Torts, and Class Actions at Syracuse University College of Law. He is also a Visiting Professor at the Federal University of Bahia (Brazil) and ITAM (Mexico). He has published several articles on class actions. He drafted a Model Class Action Code for Civil Law Countries, published in several languages. This work led to invitations to serve as a Co-Reporter in a project sponsored by the Ibero-American Institute of Civil Procedure to create a Model Class Actions Code for Latin America. Gidi also helped draft comprehensive class action legislation for the Mexican Senate and the Brazilian Ministry of Justice.

Pauline Hofmeijer-Rutten, LLM

Judge in the Rotterdam district court of first instance
Appellate judge in the Amsterdam court

My name is Pauline (F.G.T.) Hofmeijer-Rutten, LLM (I use the old style Dutch title mr. that stands for meester, maître). I work as a judge in the Rotterdam district court of first instance (three days a week) and as an appellate judge in the Amsterdam court (also NCCA, Netherlands Commercial Court of Appeal, two days a week), both in the Netherlands. I have been a judge for almost thirty years now. Both in Rotterdam and in Amsterdam I have heard many cases that could be styled class action litigation. These vary both in subject matter (cartel damages, supposedly faulty medical procedures, investors’ claims after incorrect information) and in the type of claimant (litigation vehicles to which the claims have been assigned, bundled claims of individuals, legal persons that have been established for the sole purpose of going to court and represent an unspecified number of companies). In the Amsterdam court of appeal I have also heard class action cases where the parties had reached an agreement which had to be approved by the court in order to be binding for all class members (barring opt-out) (WCAM).

Professor Samuel Issacharoff

Professor at the New York University School of Law

Samuel Issacharoff is the Reiss Professor of Constitutional Law at New York University School of Law. His research addresses the law of the political process and constitutional law, as well as issues in civil procedure (especially complex litigation and class actions). He served as the Reporter for the Project on Aggregate Litigation of the American Law Institute. He regularly appears in courts, generally on appeals, and argued the TransUnion v. Ramirez class action case in the U.S. Supreme Court in March. Professor Issacharoff is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Professor Alon Klement

professor at the Buchmann Faculty of Law, Tel Aviv University

Prof. Klement earned his LLB in Law and BA in Economics from Tel Aviv University. After practicing law for several years in a private law firm in Israel, representing class action plaintiffs, he went to Harvard where he earned his SJD degree. He was a fellow at the Harvard Program on Negotiation and has taught at the Harvard college and at the Law school's graduate program.

Prof. Klement founded the Class Action Clinic - a pioneering endeavour in transforming legal theory into practice. The Clinic's activity combines academic studies with practical experience in the emerging field of Class Actions in Israel. The Clinic's main objective is to improve the enforcement and implementation of the Class Actions Law in Israel. The Clinic is involved in class action litigation, and it also issues research and reform papers in the field.

Prof. Klement has written extensively on class actions in Israel and the US, and his work has been published in leading law reviews and peer reviewed journals, both in the U.S. and in Israel. His articles were cited by the Supreme Court of Israel as well as numerous Appellate Courts' decisions. His publications in English include International Review of Law and Economics, Journal of Law, Economics and Organization, California Law Review, Journal of Legal Studies, Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, Stanford Law Review, and Texas Law Review