If you’ve been injured by a defective product or suffered financial harm at the hands of a business, the chances are pretty good that you’re not alone. This means that you may be able to pursue a class action lawsuit against the party that wronged you, alleging such wrongdoing as engaging deceptive advertising or fraud or designing, manufacturing, or distributing a defective product.
But before you can proceed with one of these claims, you have to show that the lawsuit is properly brought as a class action. To do so, you’ll have to seek certification as a class.
Certification of class status
There are a number of characteristics that you’ll have to show before you can successfully claim class status. Here are just a few of them:
- The class must be defined: Generally speaking, there should be objective criteria that can set the boundaries of the class. This might include people who possessed a product during a certain period of time, but the specific criteria here can vary depending on the case at hand.
- The claims must be similar: The purpose of a class action lawsuit is to ensure that contradictory rulings aren’t reached in multiple cases with the same facts and bring about judicial economy. Therefore, there needs to be a significant number of people who would fall into the class, each of whom would have a claim similar, if not identical, to yours.
- Showing that class satisfaction is superior: You’ll also have to convince a judge that moving forward with the class action is the best way to go. This is because the courts tend to recognize that most litigants want to be in control of their own legal claims, and a class action lawsuit removes that ability from those who become part of the class.
Confidently pursue your class action case
This is a very broad overview of just some of the showings that you’ll have to make just to get your class action lawsuit rolling. If you’re headed down this path, then you’re likely to run into a whole host of other legal issues that you might feel like require legal assistance. Fortunately, you can have a skilled legal ally on your side to help you develop the class action strategy that you need to maximize your chances of success.