If you are a victim of fraud or you suffer injury, but your personal loss is small, it usually is too costly and time-consuming to pursue your case individually. Simply filing a case may cost hundreds of dollars in court fees. Litigation is expensive and the courts are too busy to entertain thousands of individual actions when corporations and their executives commit fraud.
But individuals who come together to collectively pursue their rights and remedies in a unified legal action against bad actors favorably change the dynamic. Together, a large group of litigants, or “class,” can remedy unlawful conduct that otherwise would be too expensive to pursue individually.
This is the principle of the “class action” lawsuit, which seeks to conserve judicial and litigant resources by providing a single forum for thousands of small individual actions into a single efficient action on behalf of the class. Many courts favor the class action vehicle to help resolve thousands of individual actions.
In a class action, an individual such as yourself will file a lawsuit on behalf of a group of persons who have suffered a common injury. For example, in a consumer dispute, class action litigation may arise from widespread harm such as a defendant selling a defective product or misrepresenting a product’s performance or capabilities.
After the lawsuit is filed, the judge in the case will make the final determination whether the facts in the case permit the action to proceed as a class action on behalf of the class.
Class actions are the preferred method for litigating securities frauds and many consumer disputes. Class actions lower the cost of litigation and relieve the courts from the burden of hearing hundreds or thousands of individual lawsuits.
The class action may be the only economically viable method to remedy a consumer fraud. If an individual lawsuit will produce only a small monetary recovery, investors or consumers may have no alternative to protect their rights. By joining together and combining resources, investors and consumers share the expense of litigation and combine their damages against a defendant.
Doyle APC attorneys have significant experience in prosecuting class action lawsuits. Class actions are often large and complex, requiring particular expertise to prosecute the action and protect the class’s interests.