If you are a fraud victim or suffer injury, but your loss is small, it is usually too costly and time-consuming to pursue your legal case individually. Merely filing a lawsuit 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 collectively pursue their rights and remedies in a unified legal action against bad actors favorably change the dynamic. A large group of litigants, or a “class,” can remedy unlawful conduct that otherwise would be too expensive to pursue individually.
The class action lawsuit 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 lawsuit 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 failing to protect customers’ personal information in a data breach or privacy violation.
After the lawsuit is filed, the judge in the case will determine whether the facts permit the action to proceed as a class action on behalf of the entire 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 consumer fraud. If an individual lawsuit produces 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.
Our attorneys have significant experience in prosecuting class action lawsuits. Class actions are often large and complex, requiring particular expertise to prosecute the suit and protect the class’s interests.