Class Action Suits
Filing and fighting a lawsuit can cost a great deal of money. For the average person, that can place justice out of their reach. But if that person becomes a part of a class (a group of similarly situated people), if the class can find a lawyer willing to finance and litigate a lawsuit, then all members of the class have a chance to right a wrong.
That is a class action lawsuit — a lawsuit brought on behalf of many similarly situated people who have been harmed in the same way by the same entity.
Usually class action litigation will have very few named plaintiffs (one or two is common), but those plaintiffs represent many other people — hundreds, thousands, sometimes millions of people.
The harm done to one person may amount to a relatively small amount of money — an extra $10 fee when you buy a product or service, for example. But if that $10 is multiplied by all the people who had to pay it, the amount could be a profit of hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars to the company that charged the bogus fee. A successful class action lawsuit can force the company to pay back all the members of the class plus pay a penalty.
You may have a case that just isn't worth fighting on its own — an employer who doesn't pay the right amount of overtime, manufacturers who fix prices on products, a household product that fails in normal usage. By joining with others in a class action, you will be helping yourself and others, and you will be sending a message that wrongdoing has a price.
