Class Action
A representative action in which a named plaintiff litigates on behalf of a defined class.
The dominant twentieth-century aggregation device, governed federally by Rule 23. Class treatment resolves the claims of absent members who never appear, which is both its efficiency and the source of its due process constraints. Two decades of enforceable class waivers pushed vast categories of consumer and employment disputes out of this forum — and some defendants, facing mass arbitration instead, have begun deliberately returning to it.
See also
- Rule 23The Federal Rule of Civil Procedure governing class actions.
- Class Action WaiverA term barring claimants from proceeding on a class, collective, or representative basis.
- Mass ArbitrationHundreds or thousands of individually filed, legally identical arbitration demands brought against one respondent at once.
- Opt-Out ClassA Rule 23(b)(3) class whose members may exclude themselves and preserve individual claims.
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