What is the purpose of a class action?
On an individual level, the goal of a class action is to rectify an individual’s harm either monetarily or through injunctive relief. On a societal level, class actions promote efficiency and economy by allowing courts to process and adjudicate the claims of hundreds or thousands of persons in one action. Class actions also promote enforcement of laws. They level the playing field by aggregating many small claims, ensuring that individuals can still recover even where their individual injuries are too modest to warrant the expense of bringing a case, and, by the same token, ensuring that corporate wrongdoers do not profit from wrongdoing that has injured many people, just because each individual injury is “small.
