Beasley Allen attorney Bill Hopkins is a guest on this week's Beasley Allen Report. He presents information about class action lawsuits. Bill says the important thing about class action lawsuits is that they allow folks who could not ordinarily bring a lawsuit for financial reasons to find relief. Generally, this is because each individual claim would not be worth enough financially to justify the costs involved with filing a lawsuit. In a class action, these claims can be combined into one lawsuit. When the case is resolved, each person involved in the class may receive compensation based on their loss. A judge must certify a case as a class action in order to allow the case to represent multiple plaintiffs with similar complaints. A lawyer must prove several points in order to get the case certified as a class action. A person also can "opt out" of a class action lawsuit, which means they do not want to be included in whatever settlement is reached for the group. In this case, they can still file their own individual lawsuit.
