Legal Question in Civil Litigation in California

Class Action Attorneys

You need an attorney to handle the class action case. Although an individual can represent him/herself in court (almost always a bad idea), a class action involves the legal rights of many others. Only an attorney can represent the interests of others in court.

The idea behind class action suits is that, for some types of injury, no one client would find it worthwhile to sue. For example, where a credit card company cheats a million customers out of $20 each, no one of the customers will be willing to go through the expense and bother of litigation to recover their losses. However, by combining forces so that $20 million is at stake, they can make a decent lawsuit. Without class actions, there would be much less incentive for dishonest businesses to conduct their affairs in strict compliance with the law.

On the downside, the costs and attorney fees tend to eat up most of the recovery. Attorney fees can be 40% or more, and then the costs come out of the remaining 60%. Where there are a million plaintiffs to be contacted by mail, postage alone becomes a huge issue.

Most class actions are far smaller than my example, but the basic premise remains the same. You should consult with a class action attorney to explain your complaint against the cable company and see whether the attorney thinks there's a potentially meritorious case to be made against the company.

I don't handle class actions myself, but I know a few attorneys who might be interested. Feel free to contact me if you like.