What kinds of relief may a court give in a class action?
• A: A court can give the same or similar relief in class actions as in individual lawsuits. Most class actions seek an award of money damages. These are known as common fund cases because they seek a common money fund for the benefit of the class. In some cases where the potential claims are too numerous or too large for the defendant to pay in full, a class action is brought to obtain the largest payment to be split fairly among the class. These are called limited fund class actions. A class action may be filed asking the court to declare the rights and obligations of the class versus the defendant. This is a declaratory judgment class action. Not infrequently a class action seeks what’s called injunctive relief. In those cases if the class wins the court will order the defendant to stop doing some harmful act or to do some positive act required by law. This can be something like getting a company to stop polluting the groundwater, or getting a fire department to stop some racially d
