The arrival on UK soil of Michael Hausfeld, the doyen of American class-action lawyers, earlier in the year has inspired some fairly excitable headlines anticipating a tidal wave of US-style group litigation. "Big business beware," cautioned a profile in The Sunday Times. Another report in the insurance press started with the simple declaration: "The eagle has landed ."

"You have some wonderful laws in the UK but you also have some serious problems," reflects Hausfeld, a partner at the Washington firm of Cohen, Milstein, Hausfeld & Toll, offering the kind of quote likely to inspire panic in UK boardrooms. The lawyer made his name representing Native Alaskans hit by the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill, Texaco workers in a record-breaking $176 million (£90 million) racial discrimination case, victims of the Holocaust in their action against Swiss banks and South African victims of apartheid.

He describes the main focus of his firm’s new London office as "the competition area because that is where we feel that there is a great shortcoming in terms of European victims having access to justice". The "second concentration" is expected to be in the area of civil and human rights. The lawyer expects the firm to have between four and six lawyers in London and to become part of a network of like-minded firms that stretches "from Canada, Australia through to Europe, including Asia and Africa". Unsurprisingly, there is considerable enthusiasm from the claimant profession in Britain. "At the moment we have far more requests from firms than I am able to handle," Hausfeld adds.

How worried should UK companies be? "I’d like to rephrase the question," he replies, not for the first time in our interview. "There are some who might be saying that we’re looking for opportunities, whereas I say we are reacting against a reality. If there weren't any Enrons and Parmalats there would be no opportunity. If there was no systematic discrimination based upon prohibitive factors then there would be no need to have minority groups seek redress to allow them equal opportunities that the law otherwise guarantees. Should companies be worried? If they’re violating the law, yes."

It is worth noting that a US class-action lawyer is setting up shop in the UK at a time when his colleagues on this side of the Atlantic have all but given up on complex group litigation. A particularly vivid example was the Vioxx litigation where claimant lawyers pre-empted the lack of legal aid in, and therefore non-viability of an action in the UK, and went directly to the US. That action - on behalf of hundreds of UK sufferers who allege heart attacks and strokes as a consequence of taking the withdrawn anti-arthritis drug - came to an end late last year when a New Jersey court ruled that it was more appropriate for the action to take place in the UK. Mark Harvey, a class action specialist and a partner at Hugh James, the South Wales claimant firm, believes that complex litigation on this side of the Atlantic is at "crunch time". "If we don’t get a couple of these cases to trial and win them I think you could say goodbye to this area of law," he says.

"We worked closely with a number of British firms in connection with Vioxx and so we feel their pain," Hausfeld says. A direction by the Lord Chancellor means that there is now only £3 million available in any year for big multiparty actions. Hausfeld believes that such a sum will not give the pharmaceutical giant Merck, and maker of Vioxx, many sleepless nights. "That is why we are intending to work within the system and then to see where a system should consider some appropriate reforms," he says.

His firm is representing Barbara Schwab, a mother of four from New York in her late thirties, who switched to light cigarettes because she says tobacco firms convinced her that they were safer. She is part of a $200 billion damages action that last year was granted class-action status on behalf of tens of millions of light cigarette smokers. "No one is contesting the fact that cigarettes are a product that can be lawfully sold but they cannot be sold in an unlawful manner," Hausfeld says. "The sale of light cigarettes by the leading tobacco manufacturers comprised a massive fraud. The principal marketing image was designed to create the belief that light cigarettes were less harmful than regular cigarettes because they contained less machine-measured tar. The companies knew that that was a hoax."

Hausfeld has been pioneering in his use of the Alien Tort Claims Act 1789. American lawyers have resurrected the obscure statute to enable companies to be sued in the American courts for human rights breaches committed anywhere in the world. He is using the 18th-century legislation on behalf of South Africans who were beaten and tortured under apartheid against multinational companies that allegedly aided and abetted the regime. The test case is being considered by the second circuit court of appeal in New York.

How does Hausfeld plead to the charge of opportunism that he is simply co-opting the causes of people with whom he has no connection? He replies by turning the question on its head and questions the motives of critics. "The criticism is so broad based as to be totally unfocused and meant to create spin," he says. "There is no question that the apartheid regime exploited and abused the black citizens of South Africa in large numbers. The issue is whether or not companies knowingly aided and abetted it … the only companies that we are pursuing are those against whom there is significant reason to show that their participation in abuse was significant and they knowingly provided aid because they understood that apartheid benefited their business. We aren’t after the beverage manufacturer who sold drinks but companies that provided financing for the military and security apparatus. Those companies who provided the guns."

Explore Law

• Columnists

• Law Panel

• Law Reports

• Student Law

Times Recommends

• UK legal industry faces loss of 10,000 lawyers
• Curious case of chocolate bunny trademark
• Divorce settlement granted after 22 years