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The purported purpose of class action law
suits is to give the common man the ability to take on the
largest corporate or private entities (who can afford the
very best legal services) and have a chance of redressing
the wrong done by these entities. It is important to
remember that even though the actual damage or cost to the
individual class member may be small, the illicit gain to
the corporate entity can be huge if done to hundreds or even
hundreds of thousands of class members.
Class actions are, in reality, normally structured to
benefit three parties. These parties are 1) the
attorneys--on both sides; 2) the court; and 3) sometimes the
original class (proponents). That the attorneys on both
sides are going to make money is obvious. What is not always
obvious is that the two sides are not always adversaries. As
there are several large firms that do a large percentage of
all class actions, what often happens is a firm which has
filed a class action against one company in a particular
industry often ends up filing against other companies in the
same industry that have committed the same offense.
This is often not as adversarial as it at first may seem
because the other companies think--" company A was caught;
case law was established; the original firm has all the
research, etc. (which are often not public by order of the
court or agreement of the parties); and we better go to that
firm and make the best deal possible (agree to pay large
attorneys' fees and get out as cheaply and quickly as
possible before someone comes after us on their own. These
are often done by the same attorneys on both sides, in a
very short time frame, and sometimes in the same court as
the original case). Remember, once they get past the
"opt-out" date and class members are locked-in and all the
companies past sins are wiped out by the court ordered
judgement (which is normally agreed to by the parties).
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