What function do class action lawsuits serve?
Class actions serve several important functions in our legal system. Of primary importance, class actions enable a large group of people injured by similar misconduct or a defective product to have their claims joined together in a single lawsuit. This is critical in situations involving hundreds or thousands of class members, where individual damages maybe small compared to the cost of a lawsuit so that no one individual would bring a claim because it does not make economic sense for them to do so. In this regard, a class action provides a way for persons and businesses with relatively small claims that would not, by themselves, justify hiring an attorney, to pool their claims against an alleged wrongdoer. This pooling of claims levels the playing field against a typically larger and more well capitalized wrongdoer by leveraging all of the smaller claims into one large claim to be handled in a single case. The class of claimants gain “strength in numbers” in making their claim that th
