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MIDWEST TODAY LEGAL COMMENTARY A friend of mine commented recently that there seems to be a lot of class action lawsuits filed these days and he wondered if I could explain what a class action is. What's the difference, he asked, between an ordinary lawsuit and a class action? The short answer, I told him, was that an ordinary lawsuit involved a single person or, at most, a few people suing one or two defendants while the class action lawsuit involves hundreds and sometimes thousands of persons joined in one single lawsuit against one or more defendants. The long answer is that class actions developed as an efficient way of avoiding the flooding of courthouses when a large number of people had claims arising from the same event, some examples being mass disasters, defective products, pollution or corporate stock manipulation. The class action procedure allows a few victims to bring a lawsuit as representatives on behalf of all victims so that there is only one trial that decides whether or not all of the class members have a good case or not. The savings to all parties can be tremendous. The concept has its roots in an old procedure known as "consolidation," which allowed and still does allow lawsuits arising from the same event to be joined together and tried -- i.e., "consolidated." An example is a car accident where the driver of one car sues the other driver. Then his passenger also sues. The court can consolidate the cases for trial. Although class action cases deal with more claimants, the principle of efficiency is the same. Finally, a victim who doesn't want to be part of a class has the right to opt out. Most eligible class members stay in the class and give up participation in trial rather than incur the expense of going it alone. This is Tom Riley for the Midwest Today Radio Edition.
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