You hear a lot about class action lawsuits but, if you’ve never been a part of one or even if you have, you may not be aware of the following 10 interesting facts about these lawsuits that we learned from an Illinois class action attorney.
. Certain things will determine if it is worth bringing a group of people together for a class lawsuit, such as the number of people affected, whether they have the same issues and whether the entire class’ interests will be served by bringing suit.
2. If you lost only about $100, it’s not worth pursuing belviq class action an action because the filing costs alone will be more than that. However, if 10,000 people lost $100, they can bring a class action lawsuit and costs and attorneys’ fees will come out of whatever the recovery amount is. So, if the case is successful, you will recover something, at least. If not, you are in no worse position than you were before.
3. If you decide that you don’t want to be part of a case, you can still make your situation known to the Illinois Attorney General Department of Consumer Fraud, your city’s consumer service department, as well as the Better Business Bureau.
4. You may not want to be part of a lawsuit and, instead, prefer to bring the case on your own. However, there are instances where a judge may require that similar cases be part of a class claim so that the defendant does not incur excessive costs by repeatedly defending similar cases.
5. The four most common types of class action lawsuits are employment related (such as a group of workers affected by an illegal act of the employer), securities law (such as a group of investors harmed by the wrongful acts of one company), consumer fraud (such as a group of consumers harmed by one defendant) and product liability (such as a group of people harmed by a defective product).
6. These lawsuits could, in some cases, have millions of plaintiffs. That is why a “lead plaintiff” is selected to attend meetings, depositions and possibly testify at trial. This person may be selected because he or she will make a good witness and because his situation is a good representation of what the whole class has experienced.
7. The lead plaintiff could receive more money from the recovery amount, as determined by the judge, than the rest of the group for to compensate for his or her time and effort.
8. Attorneys that handle these cases do not ask for any payment up front. Rather, they receive a court-approved percentage of the recovery amount, if any