The Supreme Court closes the circle on mass consumer claims: simultaneous lawsuits that should have been one are an abuse of process
Third Supreme Court ruling against splitting consumer claims to multiply costs awards: abuse when costs are the main objective of the lawsuit.
The Civil Chamber of the Supreme Court has delivered its third judgment on the abusive use of costs awards in consumer litigation, completing a doctrine that mass-claims firms had long feared: consumer protection cannot serve as a cover to turn the process into a costs business. The court itself acknowledges in the judgment being aware of the debate over the tendency to "turn the civil process into a source of business", with judicial bodies flooded by proceedings whose only real objective is the costs award.
From the 2024 and 2025 doctrine to the simultaneous-claims case
In the first judgment of the series, from 2024, the Supreme Court held that abuse exists when obtaining the costs award is the main objective of the procedural action and artifices are used to multiply it; the second, from 2025, consolidated that criterion. The new ruling addressed a particularity that remained open: the simultaneous filing of two claims that in reality should have been one. The circumstance required expressly analysing whether abuse demands temporal succession or whether deliberate fragmentation suffices, and the Chamber concludes the latter.
The reasoning protects the delicate balance of the costs system in consumer cases: the consumer loses no protection — in many cases they still risk no costs — but the procedural structure designed to maximise the lawyer's billing, rather than the client's interest, is left outside the law.
The deontological reading: loyalty to the client over economic interest
The most quoted part of the judgment points at professional deontology. "With this judgment, the Supreme Court has closed the circle: it does not reduce consumer protection. What it does is prevent that protection from serving as a cover to do business with its costs", summarises Javier Martínez, lawyer and founder of Ad Litem | Litigation & ADR, in statements carried by El Confidencial. For the lawyer, the most relevant aspect is the deontological plane: loyalty to the client must prevail over the profession's economic interest, and procedural costs cannot function as an incentive to fragment claims.
Practical consequences for debt-claim practices
The doctrine invites a review of business models built on claim volume: accumulating actions in a single lawsuit where possible, documenting why separate litigation is justified when it happens, and taking special care with fee agreements tied to the costs award. For the defence of sued companies, the judgment offers a new tool: the plea of abuse of rights backed by the fragmentation patterns the Chamber describes. The discussion also connects with the general debate on ADR mechanisms as a pre-condition to filing.
Source: El Confidencial (27 October 2026), verified 3 November 2026.
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Fuentes
- economistjurist.es. Accessed 3 November 2026.
The specific data in this article come from the official sources cited.
