Class action

A class action, also known as a class-action lawsuit, class suit, or representative action, is a type of lawsuit where a person or small group of people is authorized to sue on behalf of the interests of a larger group of similarly situated parties. The class action originated in the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and is still predominantly an American phenomenon. Canada and several European countries with civil law systems allow consumer organizations to bring claims on behalf of consumers.

Description

In a typical class action, a plaintiff sues a defendant or a number of defendants on behalf of a group, or class, of absent parties. This differs from a traditional lawsuit, in which the plaintiffs sue one or more defendants, and all of the parties are present in court. For example, a group in a class action lawsuit could be any person who ever bought a specific dangerous product; in a traditional lawsuit, the plaintiff is a single individual person or business that bought the dangerous product.

Although standards differ across states and countries, class actions are most common where the allegations involve at least 40 people whom the same defendant has injured in the same way. Instead of each individual person bringing their own lawsuits separately, the class action allows the claims of all class members—whether they know they have been damaged or not—to be resolved in a single proceeding through the efforts of the representative plaintiff(s) and appointed class counsel.

History

England and the United Kingdom

The antecedent of the class action was what modern observers call "group litigation," which appears to have been quite common in medieval England from about 1200 onward. These lawsuits involved groups of people either suing or being sued in actions at common law.