CLASS ACTION CASES 101: A Primer by Attorney Charles Jerome Ware

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In law, a "class action" case or lawsuit is filed on behalf of a sufficiently large group of people (plaintiffs, or class members) collectively to bring a legal claim to court and/or in which a class of people or other legal entities (defendants, or class members) is being sued.

Because they aggregate a large number of individualized claims into one representational lawsuit, class actions may offer a number of advantages.

The "class action" case or lawsuit originated in the United States and is still primarily an American phenomenon, although in several European countries with civil law consumer organizations may be allowed to bring claims on behalf of large groups of consumers in a class action mode.

In United States federal courts, class action cases are governed by Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 23 and 28 U.S.C.A § 1332 (d).

Since about 1938, several states (about 35) have adopted and implemented class action remedies and rules similar to FRCP 23.

Under federal civil procedure rules, the successful federal class action case must have certain defining characteristics (frequently referred to by the acronym "CANT"):

1. Commonality—there must be one or more legal or factual claims common to the entire class (in some cases, it must be shown that the common issues will predominate the proceedings over individual issues, such as the amount of damages due to a particular class member),
2. Adequacy—the representative parties must adequately protect the interests of the class,
3. Numerosity—the class must be so large as to make individual suits impractical (in other words, that the class action is a superior vehicle for resolution than numerous individual suits), and
4. Typicality—the claims or defenses must be typical of the plaintiffs or defendants.

[FRCP 23, www.law.cornell.edu/rules/frcp/23; Class Action Dilemmas: Pursuing Public Goals for Private Gain, by Deborah R. Hensler, Nicholas M. Pace, Bonita Dombey-Moore, Beth Giddens, Jennifer Gross, Erik K. Moller, RAND: Santa Monica (2000); From Medieval Group Litigation to the Modern Class Action, by Stephen C. Yeazell, Yale University Press: New Haven (1987)]

Attorney Charles Jerome Ware has been actively involved as plaintiffs' counsel in 3 major federal class action cases: (1) The $250,000,000 Burger King class action lawsuits, (2) The $100,000,000 Capitol Hill Police Force class action lawsuit, and (3) the Black Farmers class action matter.