Handling Complex Cases... Involving Thousands of Plaintiffs
Class action suits have allowed individual people to stand up against the most powerful industries in the world and to hold them accountable for their actions.
A class action is a type of lawsuit in which the claims and rights of many people are decided in a single case. Individual plaintiffs are named in the lawsuit to assert the claims of the entire class so that everyone with the same claim or injury doesn't have to file their own lawsuit. Also, because they allow people whose damages are too small to warrant an individual lawsuit to try their cases together, class actions can often be the only practical way to stop illegal practices and recover ill-gotten gains.
We have the skills, resources and experience to handle complex class action lawsuits involving a wide range of issues.
In one recent bad faith class action case, we invested over 1 million dollars in the case, including advancing costs in excess of $395,000.
The typical class action lawsuit involves a situation where a large group of people is injured by the same conduct. There are four primary types of class action lawsuits:
- Consumer Class Actions: Consumer class actions are generally brought when consumers are injured by a company's systematic and illegal practices. Examples include underpayments on insurance claims, illegal charges on bills, illegal penalties for late-payments, and failure to comply with consumer protection laws.
- Securities Class Actions: Securities class actions are typically brought on behalf of a group of investors who have been injured as a result of improper conduct, such as misstating earnings, concealing or misrepresenting risks, or otherwise engaging in activity detrimental to investors.
- Product Liability/Personal Injury Class Actions: Product liability and personal injury class action lawsuits are generally brought when a defective product, such as a drug with harmful side effects, or a large-scale accident such as a chemical spill, harms many people.
- Employment Class Actions: Employment class actions lawsuits are typically brought on behalf of employees of a company for violations of the Labor Code, such as unpaid overtime, failure to provide breaks, as well as claims ranging from safety violations to workplace discrimination.
We have achieved numerous multi-million dollar recoveries in class action cases
- Our representation of hundreds of consumers regarding a baby crib with defects that led to the suffocation of several infants. As a result of our litigation the crib was taken off-market, the manufacturer was required to buy back or repair the cribs, and damages were paid to victims' families.
- Our representation of thousands of policyholders in cases against their insurance companies, Nationwide Insurance and Farmers, for their improper reductions to claims payments. As a result of our litigation, the companies stopped taking the improper reductions, and damages were paid to policyholders.
Class action lawsuits can involve a number of complex procedural and substantive issues. We have handled cases involving multiple defendants and multiple jurisdictions that took over five years to resolve. As we handled the cases, we carried all expenses, eliminating out-of-pocket expenses for all plaintiffs.