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Class action
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Class action
A class action, also known as a class action lawsuit, class suit, or representative action, is a type of lawsuit where one of the parties is a group of people who are represented collectively by a member or members of that group. The class action originated in the United States and is still predominantly an American phenomenon, but Canada, as well as several European countries with civil law, have made changes in recent years to allow consumer organizations to bring claims on behalf of consumers.
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 between 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.
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. These groups were usually based on existing societal structures like villages, towns, parishes, and guilds. Unlike modern courts, the medieval English courts did not question the right of the actual plaintiffs to sue on behalf of a group or a few representatives to defend an entire group. Stephen C. Yeazell has theorized that the most likely reason is that the abysmally poor transportation, communications, and administrative apparatus of medieval England meant it was impossible for the English sovereign to manage the country in terms of individuals. It was much easier for the Crown to bluntly impose obligations upon entire groups, to be enforced through the sporadic use of force. Lawyers and judges did not question the right of a group to sue or be sued because to do so would bring into question the entire group-oriented society in which they operated.
From 1400 to 1700, group litigation gradually switched from being the norm in England to the exception. The development of the concept of the corporation led to the wealthy supporters of the corporate form becoming suspicious of all unincorporated legal entities, which in turn led to the modern concept of the unincorporated or voluntary association. The tumultuous history of the Wars of the Roses and then the Star Chamber resulted in periods during which the common law courts were frequently paralyzed, and out of the confusion the Court of Chancery emerged with exclusive jurisdiction over group litigation.
Chancery jurisprudence on group litigation became increasingly incoherent after 1700. As the basis of this, Yeazell has pointed to the trends towards fragmentation and individualism in English society during that period; the resulting societal pressures ultimately led to the Reform Act 1832. The underlying problem was the shift from representation based on the presumed or implied consent of a group to representation based on a common interest, such as holding shares of a corporation.
By 1850, Parliament had enacted several statutes on a case-by-case basis to deal with issues regularly faced by certain types of organizations, like joint-stock companies, and with the impetus for most types of group litigation removed, it went into a steep decline in English jurisprudence from which it never recovered. It was further weakened by the fact that equity pleading, in general, was falling into disfavor, which culminated in the Judicature Acts of 1874 and 1875. Group litigation was essentially dead in the United Kingdom after 1850.
Class actions survived in the United States thanks to the influence of Supreme Court Associate Justice Joseph Story, who imported the concept into US law through summary discussions in his two equity treatises as well as his opinion in West v. Randall (1820). However, Story did not necessarily endorse class actions, because he "could not conceive of a modern function or a coherent theory for representative litigation." Like most Americans of his time and ever since, Story took individualism for granted, which explains why he could not understand a rule allowing a court to bind an absent person to litigation purportedly conducted on that person's behalf.
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Class action AI simulator
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Class action
A class action, also known as a class action lawsuit, class suit, or representative action, is a type of lawsuit where one of the parties is a group of people who are represented collectively by a member or members of that group. The class action originated in the United States and is still predominantly an American phenomenon, but Canada, as well as several European countries with civil law, have made changes in recent years to allow consumer organizations to bring claims on behalf of consumers.
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 between 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.
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. These groups were usually based on existing societal structures like villages, towns, parishes, and guilds. Unlike modern courts, the medieval English courts did not question the right of the actual plaintiffs to sue on behalf of a group or a few representatives to defend an entire group. Stephen C. Yeazell has theorized that the most likely reason is that the abysmally poor transportation, communications, and administrative apparatus of medieval England meant it was impossible for the English sovereign to manage the country in terms of individuals. It was much easier for the Crown to bluntly impose obligations upon entire groups, to be enforced through the sporadic use of force. Lawyers and judges did not question the right of a group to sue or be sued because to do so would bring into question the entire group-oriented society in which they operated.
From 1400 to 1700, group litigation gradually switched from being the norm in England to the exception. The development of the concept of the corporation led to the wealthy supporters of the corporate form becoming suspicious of all unincorporated legal entities, which in turn led to the modern concept of the unincorporated or voluntary association. The tumultuous history of the Wars of the Roses and then the Star Chamber resulted in periods during which the common law courts were frequently paralyzed, and out of the confusion the Court of Chancery emerged with exclusive jurisdiction over group litigation.
Chancery jurisprudence on group litigation became increasingly incoherent after 1700. As the basis of this, Yeazell has pointed to the trends towards fragmentation and individualism in English society during that period; the resulting societal pressures ultimately led to the Reform Act 1832. The underlying problem was the shift from representation based on the presumed or implied consent of a group to representation based on a common interest, such as holding shares of a corporation.
By 1850, Parliament had enacted several statutes on a case-by-case basis to deal with issues regularly faced by certain types of organizations, like joint-stock companies, and with the impetus for most types of group litigation removed, it went into a steep decline in English jurisprudence from which it never recovered. It was further weakened by the fact that equity pleading, in general, was falling into disfavor, which culminated in the Judicature Acts of 1874 and 1875. Group litigation was essentially dead in the United Kingdom after 1850.
Class actions survived in the United States thanks to the influence of Supreme Court Associate Justice Joseph Story, who imported the concept into US law through summary discussions in his two equity treatises as well as his opinion in West v. Randall (1820). However, Story did not necessarily endorse class actions, because he "could not conceive of a modern function or a coherent theory for representative litigation." Like most Americans of his time and ever since, Story took individualism for granted, which explains why he could not understand a rule allowing a court to bind an absent person to litigation purportedly conducted on that person's behalf.