Class Action Litigation

A class-action lawsuit is a civil lawsuit brought on behalf of a group of people or business entities who have suffered common injuries as a result of the defendants’ conduct, with at least one individual or entity acting as a representative of that group. While the issues of a class action can vary, the issues in dispute are common to all class members.

Class actions can be brought in state or federal court. If the case involves federal laws, then federal court is the proper jurisdiction.

Each litigant could bring their own action, so why join all the actions into one class-action lawsuit? The answer is that it is often more practicable for the plaintiff, the court and the defendants to join the individual actions into one lawsuit.

There are many cases and issues that can be brought as class-action lawsuits. Often, class actions fall into one of the following categories:

Securities: Securities class actions are brought by plaintiff investors who were injured by defendant companies’ improper conduct including investor fraud and whistleblower litigation.

Personal injury: Personal injury class-action lawsuits include mass disasters such as social work or nursing home negligence, human rights violations, sexual abuse and sports litigation.

Consumer: These class actions hold accountable business entities who engage in systematic and fraudulent or illegal business practices that scam or harm the consumer. Examples include antitrust cases like price-fixing, market allocation agreements and monopolistic schemes.

Employment: Employees who have been discriminated against, employees with immigrant worker issues, workers who have hour and wage issues and employees who have on-the-job injuries or suffer because of employer safety violations can bring class-action lawsuits against employers.